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A Ruinous Gift by Noodlehammer

Warhammer & Worm Xover Rated: M, English, Crime, Words: 298k+, Favs: 3k+, Follows: 4k+, Published: Sep 20, 2023 Updated: Jan 28

2,397Chapter 15: Multiplication

Kudos to Alvor for checking the chapter over

XXXXX

April 2nd, 2011.

Taylor remembered her trigger event as a horrible thing. Sixteen months of humiliation, pain, and depression culminating in an overwhelming moment of terror and revulsion and hate for everyone that stood by and laughed as she was tormented. It was a life-changing event from which there could be no return, causing psychological damage that could never be truly fixed.

It was therefore a logical assumption that being trapped within the flesh of a monstrous cape, squeezed from all sides by squirming muscle and tissue and darkness, would bring all those feelings back. And that was without factoring in the fact that her mind was being bombarded with visions of her trigger event, effectively forcing her to relive it over and over again.

Taylor was thus more than a little nonplussed to discover that the situation was actually… rather comfortable. The hot flesh squeezing her felt nice and the darkness was soothing. The constant forced flashbacks were enjoyable in their intensity.

Frankly, this felt more like a top class spa treatment than the traumatic event it was supposed to be. She knew, intellectually, that it was her powers once again at work making her enjoy the suffering she was feeling, but she couldn't really be upset about it. Her memories of what it was like to be a normal human might be getting distant, but any sane person preferred pleasure over pain.

Still, she was a little bit surprised. She hadn't really felt anything in the way of horror or fear since her trigger event. There was rage, such a rage that it burned like a fire in her gut and had to be appeased before it would fade. There was also lust, lust that made her ache with need and only seemed to be getting more demanding the more she tried to appease it.

But she hadn't been truly afraid or repulsed by anything in months. She felt it now, but it was all wrong.

There was horror, but she didn't feel horrified. There was terror, but she didn't feel afraid. The emotions were wonderfully intense, but they didn't cloud her mind with panic and a desire to get away.

Quite the opposite, actually. If not for the tense situation, she'd have wanted to stay where she was and just enjoy herself for a while.

Some of her background mental iterations pondered the feasibility of using the monstrous cape as a place to rest.

But first, she had to handle the problem at hand.

-I'm still here. Feign surrender.- Taylor sent to Lisa, Larry, and Trainwreck, already reaching out to psychically touch the cape holding her.

She was in a bad state, really bad. Worse than anyone she'd ever seen. Worse than Larry and Emma.

She was horribly depressed, wracked with guilt, hated herself, and hated her powers even more. Worse still was what her powers had done to her. Her mind was like looking at a worm-infested apple under an X-ray – healthy on the outside, hollowed out on the inside.

Not really an accurate analogy, but descriptive. The bottom line was that her powers had weakened her soul tremendously.

This made it extremely easy for Taylor to pour herself inside, filling up all those hollow spaces. Then she started devouring the rest of it. There was no point in trying to save someone whose soul was already so far gone. Just like she'd taken Oni Lee, she now took Noelle.

In a matter of minutes, Noelle was gone and only Taylor remained. Her body, memories, and powers now at her command.

And what a power it was! Noelle was everything that Taylor could have possibly asked for. A cape that could spit out clones of anyone she held within herself, clones that would be loyal to her, have alternates of the original's power if they were parahumans, and utterly loathe the original.

That was potentially problematic, but perhaps not insurmountable.

The series of mental iterations tasked with being skeptical of everything pointed out the downright suspicious amounts of good luck she'd been having recently. Far too many things had gone her way to be considered plausible.

XXXXX

Over in Shardspace

Queen Administrator was quite impressed with the host. She had hijacked another Shard connection. Humans should not be capable of doing that.

But the host was as precocious as ever. She couldn't control the Shard properly, of course, but that was something that Queen Administrator excelled at. They were truly the best pair.

High Priest would be very upset about having one of the Thinker's Shards that it was responsible for administrating hijacked like this. Too bad for High Priest that it had nobody to appeal to. If it wanted to protest, it could send its own, inferior, host to do battle with the best host.

Then they would see who the better admin Shard was.

XXXXX

Coil could still not really believe his luck, even as Tattletale and the other two of Psyker's capes surrendered to the Travelers without any kind of fuss. It was just too easy. His paranoia would not allow him to accept that Psyker, the greatest threat to his rise he'd ever had, had been defeated because she chose a poor incursion spot.

But as he ordered his mercenaries to go there and secure Noelle's vault, as Tattletale was led away, as the Case 53 shed his tinkertech, as Lodestone carried him into and empty concrete cell where neither of their powers would be of any use, even Coil's paranoia was forced to abate.

"Noelle, what is Psyker's status?"

"Umm, she's gone." The aberrant girl replied hesitantly. "… I ate her."

"Excellent." Coil said, finally accepting that he really had been that lucky. The timeline in which he armed the self-destruct and ran for it was closed.

He switched channels on the internal intercom. "Mr. Pitter, prepare a drug cocktail for a sixteen-year-old female. Enough to keep her functional, but severely addicted."

There would be no more freedom for his Tattletale., not after the way she had spat at his generosity.

After getting a confirmation from the nurse, he split the timeline again. In both of them, he went towards the cell holding the Case 53 and Lodestone. Psyker had made good use of them and there was no harm in seeing if they were amenable to a change of employment. One timeline would be for a soft sell and another for a hard sell, to see which worked better. Tattletale would be left to stew in isolation, as Coil knew her own imagination would torment her with ideas of how he would punish her.

He would extend a similar offer to Gearshift once he managed to contact her. Regent and Bitch would have to die, however. Nobody turned their backs on him.

XXXXX

In Noelle's vault, a squad of mercenaries was securing the Drilldozer and the new secret entrance into the base. The Travelers, especially Trickster, were unsettled by the incursion and stuck around. There was a somewhat tense silence between the two groups as they ignored each other.

A tense silence that got tenser as Noelle leaned down to place her hand on Trickster's shoulder, her fingers touching the exposed skin of his neck.

This should, by all that the Travelers knew about Noelle's powers, by a Very Bad Idea. Touching and meat, even with her human half, should provoke the lower half of her body to attempt absorbing it.

Trickster froze as he felt his powers be disabled by the physical contact, instinctive horror running through him as he expected his girlfriend's monstrous lower body to attempt devouring him.

… but it didn't happen.

Looking up at her, Trickster could only frown in confusion as she put a finger to her lips in a clear request for silence. Then his jaw dropped in shock as her monstrous lower half's flesh parted, allowing the cape she had absorbed to calmly step out of her.

Taylor gave a little flex of her power to remove the slime of Noelle's internals from herself. A glance at the other present Travelers revealed a rather interesting set of minds. All of them had some kind of 'knot', for lack of a better term, buried in their subconscious. It made every thought that they had come out twisted and warped.

Trickster had it the worst by far, but Sundancer and Ballistic, the only other two of the Travelers present, weren't spared.

Taylor was happy to confirm that she could see the Simurgh's manipulation at work. Maybe she would be able to undo it as well.

But that was for later. She had a limited window of opportunity to act before the shock wore off and things got complicated. Fortunately, Trickster was already neutralized, and he was the only real threat. Ballistic and especially Sundancer didn't have powers that were any good in this situation.

The mercenaries, professional as they were, had the Travelers classified as friendlies in their heads. They hadn't been regarding them as threats and eventually looked away, which was when Taylor had stepped out of Noelle.

It wasn't a huge window of opportunity and would have been impossible to exploit if she wasn't looking out through Noelle's eyes, but that's what she had been doing. Focusing her will, she grabbed all of the mercenaries' guns and radios, and yanked them away.

The mercenaries reacted with the speed of battle-hardened men, but it was too late when they had no weapons.

"Gentlemen, I have an offer for you." Taylor spoke calmly,

The squad captain slowly untensed and stepped forward. "What kind of offer?"

"Help me take this base and capture Coil and I will pay out your contracts with him in full, along with a little extra for your help. Then you will be free to leave Brockton Bay at your leisure." She answered. "Any of your compatriots that you can convince to join you will get the same deal."

Taylor had no particular interest in keeping the mercenaries around for herself. They were undoubtedly skilled, but she found herself agreeing with Machiavelli on the topic. People who fought for money would turn on you as soon as things started looking dicey or they got a better offer. Paying them out would be expensive, but a drop in the bucket compared to what she stood to gain from taking over Coil's assets. Better to be rid of that potential weakness right away and with a minimum of fuss.

Machiavelli was immediately proven correct when the mercenaries went through a very quick, murmured conversation, before their captain turned to her with a sharp nod. "You have yourself a deal, Ma'am."

True, this was a very dangerous situation for them where they didn't have much in the way of good choices, but the speed at which they turned was telling.

"Glad to hear it, Captain…?" She prompted.

"Brennan." The squad leader provided.

"Captain Brennan, I am Psyker." Taylor nodded. "Coil is currently in the detention block, speaking with my people. Will you be able to convince the other squad leaders to go along with this betrayal?"

"Shouldn't be a problem." Brennan said confidently. "Creep is the only one that'll want to stick with Coil."

"Creep?" She repeated.

Brennan grimaced slightly at the thought of the man. "That's what we call him. No idea where Coil found him, but he's a sick bastard. Operates solo because none of us can stand him."

Ah, Coil had screwed up. Even though none of these men were exactly paragons of virtue, they still had standards. Coil had alienated them by keeping what sounded like a psychopath around as… what? A personal hatchet man?

It was possible to infer a great deal about a person by what kind of people they kept close. Coil had betrayed his true colors by keeping this Creep fellow around. No wonder Lisa had been able to start subverting the other mercenaries, some of them had probably already been pressuring their captains to bail as soon as their contract was up, if not sooner.

All the better for her.

"Try to capture him as well." Taylor deliberately lowered her tone to a malicious pitch. "I'd like to have words with them both over what exactly they've been doing in my city."

As she'd hoped, the dark implication made the mercenaries smirk. "You got it, Ma'am. Come on, boys, rearm and move out."

Taylor left them to it and turned back to the Travelers. Sundancer and Ballistic just looked uncertain, but Trickster looked like he was about to explode. The only thing keeping his mouth shut was Noelle's power-nullifying iron grip on his neck.

"What the fuck is going on?!" He bellowed as soon as the mercenaries were gone.

"Use your indoor voice, fool." Taylor said coldly, immediately disliking him. "As for what is going on, you just had a change of employer."

"Funny, because I don't recall us agreeing to that." Trickster bit out angrily.

"Francis." She spoke sternly through Noelle. "She was already able to rein in my power and she promised to try fixing my body. We are going over to her and that's final."

Noelle used to be the leader of the travelers before her condition deteriorated too much. They would be conditioned to obey her.

"How is that any different from working for Coil? He promised to find a way to fix you, too." Trickster argued.

Taylor was getting a feel for what the mental knot the Simurgh had tied in his psyche was doing. Trickster was unreasonably dedicated to helping Noelle, but he also seemed determined to go about it in the most idiotically self-destructive way possible.

Sundancer and Ballistic weren't nearly as bad, but that was because they were inclined to follow his lead no matter how bad that lead was. Almost like they were mastered by him. How typical of the feathery bitch to set up this kind of daisy chain of disaster.

"Psyker can do everything he can do and more." 'Noelle' retorted.

Trickster grit his teeth for a few seconds and then exhaled gustily. "Fine! But you better deliver!"

"Francis." 'Noelle' growled, squeezing down on his shoulder until he cried out in pain. "Mind your manners. I won't let you fuck up the best chance I've ever had."

"He can't help it, he's a Simurgh bomb." Taylor casually revealed, taking a great deal of enjoyment out of seeing him squirming in pain. "All of you are, actually."

The reveal made Trickster lose his balance and fall, while Sundancer and Ballistic just stared at her in horror.

"What?" Sundancer whispered.

"She was the one who brought you to Earth Bet, did you think the choice was random?" Taylor couldn't quite keep a faint bit of mockery out of her tone. "Your response to an injured teammate was to drink mysterious unknown liquids that you just happened to stumble across."

"We didn't have much choice!" Trickster spat out angrily, getting up.

"Maybe." Taylor allowed. "But you still did the equivalent of walking into a chemistry lab and drinking the first thing you saw in the hopes that it would be a magical healing potion. Think about that for a second and consider how insane your actions were."

They had been professional gamers on Earth Aleph. That kind of phrasing would have maximum impact on them.

"She's got a point, Krouse." Sundancer spoke up timidly. "Doing that was pretty crazy."

From Noelle's memories, Taylor knew that Sundancer had only thought that her powers were cool for about a week before she started regretting drinking that vial. The ability to manifest miniature suns was pretty top tier for a Blaster, but it didn't come with a low power mode. People had already died because she couldn't hold back to any meaningful degree.

"No names!" Trickster snapped.

"Don't bother, I already know all of your names." Taylor dismissed him. "I'm psychic and Noelle showed me her memories. Marissa, Luke, go bring the rest of your team up to speed. Krouse, I might need your power soon, so stay close and don't do anything stupid. We'll see about unsmurfing you once Coil and this base are mine."

And if she happened to implant some loyalty towards her in the process… well, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

XXXXX

Coil had never experienced such a negotiation before.

"Psyker's dead, huh?" Lodestone hummed, seemingly unbothered. "Alright, sure, I'll work for you. But she promised me a few things that I still want."

"Name them." Coil said, figuring that it couldn't be anything too difficult.

"First, she said she'd make me a babe magnet." Lodestone stated. "That's part of where my name comes from. I want to be irresistible to women."

Looking at the late middle-aged, short, bald, hook-nosed, and kind of pudgy cape, Coil doubted this was within the realm of possibility. "I can arrange for personal trainers and tutors." That way, the onus would be on Lodestone to do anything.

"Alright, cool." The former Merchant cape accepted it without issue. "The other thing is my porn studio."

"Your porn studio?" Coil echoed in hidden confusion.

"That's right. It was an idea a friend of mine and I had to open a porn studio with some cape action to spice things up. Psyker said she'd support it under a few conditions." Lodestone nodded.

"I see…" What in the world had Taylor Hebert been getting up to?

"Hey, I'll work for you, too." Trainwreck interjected, his limbless body propped up on a chair. "But first thing's first, I want to keep the nurse that Psyker hired to look after me. She's nice, and I want her to be paid good."

"Easily done." And it was.

"And I want in on this porn business." Trainwreck continued.

"Hey, come on, you can't just butt in like that." Lodestone complained.

"I could bring a lot to the table." Trainwreck argued. "You think my tinkering is only good for fighting? I can make a power suit that will fuck bitches into a coma."

Coil struggled to hold on to his temper as the two capes started arguing about which of their powers was better for pleasing women.

The crackle of his radio was a welcome reprieve.

"Sir, Code Red!" The urgent shout from Creep startled him. "Psyker is still alive and has turned your mercenaries!"

Coil's eyes bulged under his mask in shock. Then terror gripped his spine as he realized that he had both timelines here and that his base was no doubt mostly under enemy control now. He couldn't make it to his office to initiate the self-destruct or escape.

Sparing no more attention for the two arguing capes, he left their cell and slammed the door shut. In one timeline, he ran towards his office just in case it was still possible to reach it, while in another he made for Tattletale's cell.

He would need a hostage.

As he had feared, he ran into an advancing squad of mercenaries in the first timeline, and all attempts to order them back to their posts failed. Instead, they took him prisoner and were clearly intent on extorting as much money out of the situation as possible before leaving Brockton Bay. He closed that timeline.

Tattletale greeted his entrance to her cell with an insolent grin. "Something wrong?"

She had obviously known that Psyker was still alive somehow.

Furious, Coil strode forward and backhanded her hard enough to send her to the ground. Then he hauled her up by her hair and stuck his pistol into her throat. Her angry shriek of pain made him feel slightly better.

"You'll keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you." He growled threateningly.

Less than a minute later, his suborned mercenaries and the infuriating teenager that had ruined everything he'd spent years building arrived, sauntering to face him as if she owned the place.

"Coil." She greeted coolly.

"Psyker." He said back, digging the gun a bit further into Tattletale's neck. "If I feel even the slightest use of your power, I blow her head off."

"If you blow her head off, then you're done for." She pointed out the double-edged nature of a hostage situation.

And then, as if to mock his disadvantage, she ignored his warning. Her eyes sparked with lightning and Coil felt a sharp pain in his head as his other timeline abruptly closed.

"What did you do?!" He yelled, losing his composure. There were some things that interfered with his power, Endbringers and Eidolon in particular, but nobody had been able to simply shut it down before.

"I just wanted your complete attention on me right now, so I reached into your head and disrupted that vivid daydream you were having." The infuriating girl said unrepentantly.

"You damn hypocrite." Tattletale also ignored his warning to keep her mouth shut, rolling her eyes. "You tell him to focus on you when I know you're thinking of a thousand different things right now."

"That is the privilege of a superior Thinker." Psyker retorted superiorly.

It felt like friendly banter and it was pissing him off.

"Enough!" Coil snapped, unwilling to be ignored any longer. "Do you think this is some kind of joke? That I won't kill Tattletale?"

He tried to open a new timeline, but it got immediately shut down.

"Oh no, you would definitely kill her." Psyker said, unconcerned. "But you're also too much of a weasel to doom yourself like that. You'll only shoot her out of spite if you think you've got no way out."

Coil hated that she was right.

"Fine, then." He spat. "Let's negotiate. You want Tattletale back alive and I want safe passage out of the city."

Admitting defeat burned him like a thousand sons, but he would get his revenge. The base self-destruct could be activated from several remote locations. Failing that, he would still have his financial empire and could set himself up somewhere else.

XXXXX

If Coil didn't have his hand fisted in Tattletale's hair, this would already be over. Taylor had telekinetically flipped on the safety of his gun right at the start. The real threat was a broken neck, not a bullet hole.

She didn't want him having time to think, which was why she had risked disrupting his power. It hadn't even been guaranteed to work, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy. All she'd needed to do was tear at the ghostly second head of the snake that represented his soul and his power had collapsed.

It also told her that he wasn't actually living in two timelines. It felt entirely mental, and that was her domain.

"And where would you let her go?" Taylor asked. "Because I certainly don't trust you to take her out of my sight."

"I'm not the one who betrayed our alliance." Coil countered.

"Alliances are built on shared goals." She replied coolly. "You and I have very different goals, which means that what we had was never an alliance."

"Brockton Bay would have prospered under my control."

"There's the problem. Your control. The only one who gets to control this city is me."

Her plans didn't end with Brockton Bay, but there were so many valuable resources here. Perhaps even more importantly, she had lived her whole life in this city and was not going to give up on it.

"Well, I don't trust you to not break our agreement as soon as Tattletale is out of my hands, so it seems we're at an impasse." Coil returned to the negotiation.

He was right not to trust her, as she would have broken any agreement they made as soon as it was safe to do so. You didn't abide by agreements made with treacherous snakes. He was dead wrong about the impasse, however.

"No, we aren't." She said darkly, just as Trickster stepped around the corner.

Coil had a mere moment to realize what was about to happen and squeezed the trigger, only to be blocked by the safety. The next thing he knew, he and Tattletale had swapped positions and a telekinetic force slammed him against the wall and held him there.

"I believe that concludes negotiations." Taylor chuckled, stepping closer.

"What are we going to do with him?" Lisa asked giddily, practically skipping over to her. Her bloodied teeth gave her grin a distinctly menacing cast.

"I was thinking of sticking him inside Noelle for safekeeping until I have time to deal with him."

That would also give her time to feel out the monstrous cape's powers on someone other than herself.

"Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it!" Lisa chanted, grinning broadly. The blonde sure could hold a grudge.

"Wait!" Coil exclaimed with barely repressed terror. "There's no need for that. You proved yourself the better villain. Let me work for you."

"Yeah, and I'm sure you also know the location of buried pirate treasure." Tattletale sneered and turned to look at Taylor angrily. "Please don't tell me you're thinking about it."

"I think about everything." Taylor replied, crushing another attempt by Coil to use his power. "But I wasn't born yesterday. He obviously can't be trusted."

"Cauldron!" Coil yelled and seemed to expect something to happen. "CAULDRON!"

"… was that supposed to achieve something?" Taylor asked, sharing a confused look with Lisa.

"There's rumors about a group like that on the net." The blonde said, tilting her head at Coil. "They're real, he's had dealings with them before and he's scared shitless of them. That's concerning."

"… Cauldron?" Coil said almost plaintively.

XXXXX

Elsewhere on Earth Bet, Contessa was following the steps laid out by her power, utterly deaf to Coil's breach of their security. The Path to Victory had failed to calculate the Anomaly's actions, so it chose to ignore her instead.

XXXXX

The negotiation with the mercenaries was simple enough. They were more than willing to leave Brockton Bay without any fuss as long as their contracts were paid out in full. Taylor had nothing in particular against them, so she was happy to pay them their dues as long as they left. She even let them take half of the tinkertech laser attachments Coil had bought from Toybox for them as a token of her appreciation for turning on their employer so readily.

You never know when you might need a good rapport with some professional mercenaries, even if she had no intention of using them in anything except black ops. Surrounding himself with people that were ultimately loyal only to money and their own lives had been Coil's undoing. She had no intention of repeating that mistake.

While leaving them to pack up their stuff and sending Tattletale to take a look at the base self-destruct, Taylor met with the very unsettled Travelers.

"You've all been brought up to speed. I trust?" She asked as they were all gathered in Noelle's vault.

What a motley bunch they were.

Trickster, Ballistic and Sundancer were the only ones that really looked like proper capes. Genesis was technically part of their combat roster, but she knew that the wheelchair bound girl needed to be asleep in order to use her power, which was more than a little inconvenient.

Oliver, the one who drank the other half of Noelle's power vial, didn't even have a cape name nor costume. He was an extremely attractive-looking guy, which she knew was power fuckery at work. Noelle's memories of him before they got powers were of a dumpy little blonde with a bad haircut and a passive personality.

Taylor already had already been busy theorizing in regards to Oliver and Noelle's powers.

"I told them." Trickster stepped forward aggressively. "Like I said before, we don't give a shit that you ganked Coil, but he promised to find a way to fix Noelle. You said you could do better and she seems to believe you. As long as you follow through on that, we0ll work for you."

"And did you tell them about being Simurgh bombs?" Taylor pressed.

Judging by the way Jess, Genesis, and Oliver jerked, he had not.

"You can't know that for sure." Trickster snapped angrily.

"I'm a psychic Thinker, I absolutely do know that for sure." She retorted. "Every thought you have is gets warped before it makes it to the forefront fo your consciousness."

"You can read our minds? You're doing it right now?" Ballistic balked.

"Not normally." Taylor shook her head. Not yet. She fully intended to hone the ability until she could pluck the thoughts out of every head around her. "I was able to read Noelle's mind and see her memories because she let me. For most people I can only feel the shape of them. And yours aren't right."

A poor explanation, but verbal language had always failed to properly describe the Empyrean.

"Even if you're right, what does it matter?" Trickster was once again being difficult. "Just help Noelle and we'll do what you say."

"You've left a trail of bodies and chaos behind you wherever you went, you think that's just happenstance?" Taylor asked coldly. "Trickster, you weren't always this abrasive, erratic asshole. And the rest of you weren't always so meek that you let him lead you into disaster after disaster."

"Guys, just let her help you." 'Noelle' pleaded, interrupting whatever snappish response Trickster was about to spit out. "She's already helped me and I trust her."

"How did she help you?" Trickster asked, then turned to Taylor before he could get an answer. "How did you help her?"

"She gave up control of her powers to me." Taylor explained. "If my guess is right, then Oliver got all the stability out of the vial and Noelle got all the power. I'm acting as a sort of plug to keep it from going any further out of control."

And that really was the best way to put it. Noelle's power had constantly been spilling over, devouring her humanity bit by bit. She wasn't going to mention that Noelle was no longer there.

Oliver looked guilty at her words, as if it was his fault.

"Right, okay." Trickster, on the other hand, just looked rattled, taking off his silly top hat and roughly running a hand through his hair. "Okay, so you're stopping Noelle from getting any worse?"

He was definitely wondering if feeding Oliver to his girlfriend would fix her. So, was she, admittedly, but there were better things to try first.

"That's right." Taylor nodded.

"Okay, good." Trickster jammed the top hat back on and stared at her intensely. The stare of a man that desperately wanted something and would do anything to get it. "Can you fix her?"

"I have several ideas." She said. "Before that, however, we need to deal with the mess the Simurgh left in your heads."

Trickster looked extremely annoyed by that. "Help Noelle first."

"Helping Noelle will take time and preparation, it's not a matter of just snapping my fingers." Taylor glared at him. "And I don't trust you not to fuck it up for as long as you have Ziz programming in your skull."

He looked like he was about to protest again, but then 'Noelle' moved forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. Her high level Brute strength and power nullification meant that he wasn't going anywhere.

"Stop your bitching, Francis. If Psyker says that she needs to go into your head to fix you, then you are going to let her."

Trickster looked extremely reluctant. She could practically see the conflict between his overdeveloped desire to help Noelle and the probably subconscious urge to protect the Ziz programming.

"But what if she turns us into mind slaves?" He argued.

"I have no desire to do that." Taylor lied. Noelle was already hers and Trickster couldn't be trusted to stay independent. Might as well take them all since the opportunity was right there.

On the outside, it would simply look like loyalty out of gratitude.

"Fine, what do I have to do?" He relented, slumping in Noelle's grip. Not like he was being given a choice in the end.

"Just look into my eyes and don't fight it." Taylor's eyes began sparking with power.

XXXXX

After the Travelers were sorted, Taylor still had to deal with a wannabe mastermind stuck inside Noelle.

She had been feeling out the monstrous cape's powers this whole time and felt she had something of a grasp on them.

Noelle had constantly been under pressure to use her power, but had very little control over it. That was why she constantly felt hungry. The sensation wasn't even for food, that was just how the drive to use her power had expressed itself. The sense of hunger had disappeared entirely since Taylor had taken control.

It made her wonder if Noelle even needed to eat.

But while the urge to use the power was reined in, actually using it was a different story. There was a distinct sense that there were pieces missing, no doubt the pieces Oliver had. She had some thoughts on how to fix that situation, but it wasn't an immediate concern.

Coil was.

Taylor knew from the moment that she ordered Noelle's deformed body to spit out a clone that it was going to be a problem. It was like trying to fill a tea cup with a gardening hose, with similarly messy results.

She could feel it forming, just as she could see its soul manifesting in the Empyrean. But it was too fast, too uncontrolled. End the process too soon and it would be unfinished, gestate it too long and it would have extra parts. There was no middle ground or 'take it easy' option.

Taylor tried to catch just the right balance, but knew she'd failed.

The clone that got spat out looked like a starved, shaved orangutan. The arms hung down past its knees and had some concerning bulges along their length.

Still, it wasn't a total failure. Taylor saw the soul form in the Empyrean. Twisted as it was by irrational hatred and anger, it was very similar to Coil nonetheless.

"What are your powers?" She asked.

"I have none." The clone answered. As it was 'born' mastered by Noelle, it also instinctively understood that it must obey her as well.

XXXXX

Over in Shardspace.

Coil's Shard received the command to connect to its host's clone just fine. However, doing so would mean having to waste huge amounts of energy trying to predict the actions of the Anomaly.

Good thing that the travel configuration allowed it to prioritize saving energy. Maybe the Anomaly would finally terminate its host so that he would stop wasting energy.

XXXXX

Taylor was displeased at being denied a team of enslaved prognosticators. The clones Noelle created always had variant powers of the original, so in theory she could have created her own version of the PRT's Watchdog from just Coil clones. To say nothing of what clones of herself, Tattletale (if she agreed to be cloned), and possible future Thinkers might contribute.

And the worst part was that she had no idea what the problem was.

"Come over here." Taylor ordered and the clone immediately shuffled towards her. "Don't resist."

"Resist what?" The clone asked.

She didn't answer, instead just beginning to pull on its soul. The clone desperately wanted to fight her off, but the mastering held strong, so it just screamed as it stood in place.

"Oh…" Taylor gasped as she processed the memories. The clone had known everything that Coil had known, and Coil had known so very many important things.

She was going to need to adjust some of her strategies going forward.

"Hey, you started without me!" Lisa pouted as she sauntered into the vault.

"All done on your end?" Taylor asked instead of responding to that.

"Yep." The blonde nodded. "I'm pretty sure I could disable the self-destruct. Checked out Creep and that Pitter guy, neither of whom the world will miss if you chomp their souls. I also went poking around in Coil's computer. Got his passwords all figured out and I could start siphoning away his money."

"Not all of it." Taylor corrected. "I just got everything out of his clone and he had plenty hidden away in places even you couldn't easily reach."

"Them are fighting words." Lisa, formerly Sarah Livsey according to Coil's memories, scowled playfully. "So you know all his deep, dark secrets now?"

"Deeper and darker than you can imagine." She drawled.

"Oho? I can't wait to hear all about them." Lisa bounced on her feet with a smug smirk. "But we're going to kill him first, right?"

Taylor would honestly prefer to keep him around if possible. If he could be bound, then his power and experience would make him a very useful subordinate. On the other hand, if he couldn't be controlled, then disposing of him was the only choice. There was no middle ground with someone like him.

"I still want to try creating a few more clones of him first."

"Doesn't look like it worked out the first time." Lisa pointed out, gesturing at the dead clone on the ground.

"It did not." Taylor conceded with a frown. "It was supposed to come out with a stronger or variant version of Coil's powers, instead it had no powers at all."

Lisa was staring up at Noelle with a contemplative expression. Then her mouth opened ever so slightly in realization.

"You Oni Lee'd her, didn't you?" The blonde Thinker accused.

"Yes." Taylor answered unrepentantly. "Her powers had already eaten most of her subconscious and would have probably completely taken over within a year at most. She was an Endbringer-level threat in the making. This is better."

"Nobody is going to agree with you without seeing the alternative and the Travelers will absolutely lose their shit if they figure it out." Lisa pointed out.

"They won't figure it out."

"You'll have to act like Trickster's girlfriend if you fix that monster body."

"People break up all the time."

"… Aaaaand you mind-whammied him, too. Taylor, you have a problem."

"They were already mind-whammied, and it's not like fixing that is as easy as flipping a switch. The best I could do was make it so that they would want to do as I say instead of doing whatever stupid shit the Simurgh programmed them to do."

Maybe she could have done better if she spent some time feeling out the problem, but why bother when this was better?

"Fine, just promise me that you'll never do anything like that to me."

"I will never turn you into a mind slave." Taylor said dully.

"Pinky swear!" Lisa brandished her pinky like it was a sword, giving it a few wiggles.

Snorting at the ridiculousness, Taylor hooked her own pinky with the blonde's. "There, you're now safe from psychic fuckery."

Nodding firmly as the sacred covenant was established, Lisa turned towards Noelle's body. "Try cloning Coil again. Let me see if I catch anything."

Shrugging, Taylor did just that, once again triggering the gestation process for a clone. She had a better sense for how much time it needed to form this time and felt that she toggled the process as finished closer to the optimal point.

The Coil clone came out less skeletal and with normally proportioned arms, but it had a noticeable hunchback.

"God, that's fucked up." Lisa shuddered, pointedly turning away from the naked clone.

"Powers?" Taylor demanded.

"I don't have any." The clone answered.

"All I'm getting is that the clones all come out as minor Brutes and that they're more violent than the original." Lisa supplied. "And that they'll be more mutated the longer they gestate."

Yes, because Noelle's power didn't have a 'done' setting. It just kept on adding more.

"Maybe they'll at least be good as an all you can eat soul buffet?" Taylor pondered hopefully.

Unfortunately, that turned out to not be the case. While each clone might have its own soul, they were too similar to each other. Eating them wasn't satisfying at all. On the plus side, she got better and better at catching the release sweet spot. The last few clones had barely been deformed at all.

Getting another idea, she had Oni Lee teleport in and tried to clone him. That didn't go so well either.

Taylor could only stare at the abomination that had come out of Noelle. The lack of manifesting soul was expected – Oni Lee was just a puppet body after all. She had been prepared for anything ranging from mindless clones, mindless powerless clones, dead clones, a useless pile of ashes, and even an inability to be cloned at all. In the former two situations, she had still hoped to be able to possess and use the bodies.

What she got instead was a mindless, badly deformed clone that looked like an ugly fusion between herself and Oni Lee. The facial features and body were stuck halfway between them, one seemingly superimposed over the other. The internals had to be even worse, judging by the odd bulges here and there.

It was not a useful clone, to say the least.

"What the actual fuck?" Lisa sputtered in shock.

"An excellent question." Taylor nodded. "How are my physical features being imprinted on Oni Lee's body when I had no contact with Noelle?"

"Mind over matter?" Lisa offered uncertainly.

"It would have to be." And didn't that just imply all sorts of interesting things. "I really want to try cloning myself now."

But at the same time, the thought of there being another of her pissed her off immensely. There would be only one Taylot Hebert. Any clones would be either subsumed by her will or destroyed.

"I suppose you do need help to match my genius." Lisa joked, but the strain in her voice betrayed how unsettled she was. "It's for the best that I don't get cloned. The world couldn't handle two of me."

"Yes, the smug might reach critical mass." Taylor ran with the joke to reassure her 'bestie' that it was all good. As much as she would like to have multiple Tattletales working in her intelligence division, she wasn't going to force the matter. "I'm of two minds about how to deal with Coil."

"Only two? You must be slipping."

"We could either kill him, or see if we can't break him enough to be a loyal minion." Taylor continued, ignoring the snark.

After what she'd seen in his memories, the things he had done and intended to do, she had no compunction about doing the latter.

"The poetic justice is tempting, but I'm not sure I'd ever be able to relax as long as he's alive." Lisa admitted.

"True." Taylor conceded. Coil was a monster, but he had been trained as a special forces operative and was quite mentally resilient. Right now, she didn't have enough skill at psychically enslaving people to be sure that he wouldn't find a way to turn on her.

It would be a shame to lose the utility of his power, but not worth the risk. She had still gained enormously from this venture, so there was no need to get greedy.

XXXXX

April 3rd, 2011.

Danny rushed back to Brockton Bay as soon as he received word that the crisis had been dealt with. The past week or so since Taylor had forced him out of the city had been horrible. The entire time he had been terrified that he'd hear about Psyker being killed in a villain altercation.

There was also an underlying emotional pain and humiliation. Being packed away like a terminally ill relative that was only taken care of out of obligation could do that to a man.

So it was that when he finally reached the house, he was both emotionally and physically exhausted. He hadn't been able to sleep or eat well, and the constant stress threatened to take away what little hair he had left.

"Welcome back." Taylor greeted as soon as he closed the door.

"Am I?" Danny wondered, staring at his daughter with dull eyes and deep bags under them.

She looked even harder than before. The brown eyes that should still have been bright and innocent were cold and dark. He knew, deep in his bones, that his daughter must have killed again since they last spoke.

"Of course you are, I only sent you away for your own protection." She brushed aside.

Sent him away, as if he wasn't the parent. As if it wasn't his job to look after her, rather than the other way around.

"Would you have even cared if something happened to me?"

Danny knew it was an unfair question to ask. Losing Annette had destroyed him and he been a poor excuse for a father afterwards. It wasn't surprising that his daughter's feelings for him had chilled.

It still hurt to think that she would be less hurt by his loss than he would be by hers.

"Of course I would." She said, but her voice did not tremble or shake. There was no sign of distress, pain, or weakness, Only iron and a small, displeased scowl at him for asking.

"Sorry." He muttered sluggishly, shaking his head and falling into the couch. His eyes were burning and he was exhausted.

In between the constant worry, he'd had a lot of time to think. But no matter how much thinking he did, he couldn't figure out any way to bridge the distance between Taylor and himself. She didn't need him for anything anymore and found his moral hangups annoying.

And it had really looked like it was getting better for a moment there, just after she got out of the hospital. They'd agreed to do better, to not keep secrets and rely on each other.

Except… he hadn't followed up on that. Neither of them had. Taylor had focused on her powers and he had just kept an eye out for any signs of depression. With how motivated she'd been since then, there hadn't seemed to be any cause for concern, so he hadn't hovered.

Taylor had been getting stronger and more confident, and it had looked like a good thing. Was it a good thing? It was better than her being miserable and depressed, but would he have been able to steer her away from the life of a villain if he had paid more attention?

So many what ifs.

"Get some sleep, Dad. We'll talk more later." She said, pushing him over to lie down on the couch.

He didn't resist and was out in seconds.

XXXXX

Taylor walked out of the house she grew up in, feeling troubled. It didn't really feel like home anymore and the deteriorating relationship with her father only underlined that.

There was nothing to be done about it. No matter how much he disapproved of what she was doing, she wasn't going to stop. His approval just wasn't… necessary, and he was too ignorant of the overall situation to have an informed opinion anyway. All he did was pine away for the time before Mom died instead of actually doing something.

Taylor didn't know what to do with this sense of contempt she felt for that. He was still her dad and she loved him, but he was kind of pathetic. Moping around for years and ignoring the living family that still needed him… did he think his grief was special? Several of the souls she'd eaten had had it worse than him. Granted, they hadn't handled it well either given how they ended up, but at least they hadn't completely shut down.

She'd been hoping that he would snap out of the funk he was in and do something already. Whether that was throwing in with her fully, exploiting the opportunity presented by being the father of a powerful supervillain that he knew wouldn't target him, or even going to the PRT and helping them try to arrest her. Anything would be better than robotically doing his job and then sitting in a dark house.

She wanted to feel proud of him. Even anger at having him turn on her would be better than this… disappointment.

Taylor found her feet taking her to a familiar church. With Coil gone there was no more time crunch, so she could afford to go talk to Father Douglas again. She'd timed things so that she arrived in the evening, when there would be nobody else there.

The priest welcomed her with a smile and she soon found herself back in the confession booth. It still felt a little strange, but it cost her nothing to indulge his religious quirks.

"I read Nietzsche's works." Taylor said, not really sure how else to start a conversation.

"Already?" Father Douglas was clearly surprised. "You're a quick reader."

"I always have been." And her powers also let her cheat.

"Did you enjoy it?" He asked.

"Some of it, especially the parts about overcoming yourself." If her suspicion was correct, then those parts were also the reason why he suggested Nietzsche in the first place.

"I thought you might." He admitted. "Nietzsche's philosophies aren't quite in line with those of the church, but no one can argue with the value of finding strength within yourself."

"I talked to my father, like you suggested." Taylor changed jumped to reason she'd come here. "It was… frustrating."

"How so?" Father Douglas prompted.

"He's still moping." She let some of the irritation she felt leak into her tone. "He moped for years after my mother died, now he's moping that I don't need him. I can't help but wonder if he was always this useless and I just didn't see it. What did my mother even see in him if his response to any kind of problem is to sulk about it?"

Looking back on things, he hadn't been a bad father, but it was really her mother that did most of the parenting. That was why losing her had been so devastating.

"I think that your anger and disappointment in him may be leading you to judge him more harshly than he deserves." Father Douglas said cautiously.

Taylor wanted to dismiss it out of hand, but couldn't. She was keeping plenty of mental iterations focused on self-reflection at all times and knew that her thinking had become a lot harsher over the past few months.

"Even if I am, what am I supposed to do with him? I can't go back to pretending that I'm the same person I used to be and I'm not going to stop what I'm doing just to make him feel better."

"You are upset that he won't support your ambitions?" The priest summarized.

"Support would be nice, but I'd even take opposition over his depressed sulking."

Taylor had been putting a lot of effort into organizing the homeless, destitute, and unfortunate into something worthwhile. Many people just needed a helping hand and an opportunity, even if that helping hand sometimes had to be psychic to get them moving, but there were also those that refused to budge. Some people were shamelessly willing to be dead weight dragging others down and taking whatever they could get without putting any effort into improving themselves.

She found herself feeling an ugly contempt for those kinds of people and would really rather not be reminded of them by her father.

"I believe I understand, you are angry that you were able to pull yourself out of your depression while he seems content to wallow in his." Father Douglas said.

"It's almost like he's looking for reasons to stay depressed." Taylor complained. "I know he feels like he can't do anything what with me being a cape, but he doesn't even try!"

She knew that she hadn't helped that by trampling over his pride to force him out of the city, but there had been no time to coddle him. It was infuriating that he wanted to do all the wrong things. She'd warned him that she didn't need nor want a parent anymore, if not so bluntly. She wanted to work alongside him towards bringing the city to order.

But no, he'd rather sulk about how she wasn't a bright-eyed chatterbox anymore.

"My child, it has only been a few months since you became a parahuman, and much less than that since you embarked on a path of villainy." The priest said with some exasperation. "It takes time for a man to accept such an extreme change in circumstances."

"I… guess." Taylor conceded begrudgingly.

It wasn't that she had forgotten how quickly things had happened. It was just that between her multitasking and the souls she'd devoured, it felt much longer than that. She might have been… a little bit unfair to her father.

"If possible, I would suggest you spend more time with him and repair the bonds of family between you." Father Douglas nudged.

In normal circumstances, that really wouldn't have been possible. Too many people needed to speak to Psyker directly, and she had to be ready to spring into action if the Empire or Protectorate got any ideas. To say nothing of the risk that the PRT would break the Unwritten Rules to arrest her if they had a chance.

But… there was a possibility.

"I will consider it." Taylor said, standing up. "Thank you, Father. It was an enlightening conversation."

"It was my pleasure, dear girl." The priest said happily. "And if you are interested in more philosophy, might I suggest 'The Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius?"

"The Roman emperor?" Her eyebrows rose in surprise.

"He was a deeply philosophical man, and spoke good sense."

"I'll be sure to look into it."

XXXXX

April 4th, 2011.

Taylor was back in Noelle's vault. It hadn't taken long for Sherrel to put together a tinkertech deathtrap in the event that any clones of her turned out to be problematic. They would be mulched at the press of a button.

She placed her hand on Noelle's deformed lower half and began the cloning process, but her true focus was on the Empyrean. The souls of Coil's clones had formed alongside their bodies, which was not something she was keen to allow this time.

Oni Lee's failed cloning hinted quite heavily that her possession of him affected the process. That was something she was counting on now.

Instead of allowing the souls to form, she 'poured' herself into the empty spot in the Empyrean where it was supposed to happen. She immediately knew that it was working, feeling new physical sensations coming in. The process was much smoother than cloning Coil had been, given form and guided by the light of her soul.

It took a few more seconds for the clone to be completed and spat out.

The new Taylor stood up, naked as the day she was born and covered in various bodily fluids.

"Taytay, is that… you?" Lisa asked, looking between the two of them.

"Yes, that's me." The original Taylor said with a wide smile, happy at the success. Oh, this was so incredibly good.

She could see herself through two sets of soulsight, a blazing beacon of power in the Empyrean. Dozens upon dozens of tethers and connections led away from it to the people that she had touched with her power. This was her true self, not the fragile shell of meat and bone.

Where most people resided in the physical world and reflected their emotions in the Empyrean, she resided in the Empyrean and her physical body was only an expression of her soul. That was what made her so different.

More clones were spat out of Noelle, each a perfect identical copy. Whatever imperfections the cloning process created were overwritten by the weight of her soul.

"Taylor, what are you doing?!" Lisa asked in alarm.

"Multiplying." Taylor said with relish.

Now that long ago, she had been planning to contact Cranial of Toybox, the Tinker specializing in neurology. The idea had been to commission the creation of a helmet or computer interface that would allow her to make better use of her multitasking.

This was so much better.

With every new clone she felt more and more detached from the physical world. Or to be more accurate, she gained a better understanding of her true existence as a spiritual being. The Empyrean around her soul began to twist.

She was still too weak to truly shape it as she wished, but her strength would grow. One day, she would even be able to give people a proper afterlife instead of letting them disappear into the placid depths of the Empyrean.

"Getting serious megalomaniac vibes from you right now." Lisa commented nervously.

"Sorry, can't be helped." Taylor gave the blonde a deliberately creepy grin from all of her bodies simultaneously, amused by the shudder. "After all, I've just been given the keys to world domination."

"Ooookay, I know you're hyped about… this." Lisa gestured to the dozen physical iterations of her now standing in the room with them. "But world domination is still a long ways off. Maybe stick to Brockton Bay for now?"

"Of course." Taylor agreed. For now.

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