Crystalized Munchkinry - Act II - Chapter 11 (Patreon)

“My father?”

“Yes, Taylor,” he answered with a sigh.

“Why would I need to tell my dad?”

“Because he is your father.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t need to deal with this, too,” she countered. “He has enough problems without it.”

She watched as Admin shook his head and sighed, a small, slime-sized beach chair appearing next to hers before he tiredly dropped into it.

“Taylor,” he began, in the tone of someone carefully explaining something simple, “he is your father. Do you think he would hate you if he knew you had powers?”

Taylor couldn’t really answer that. The very idea that her father could hate her was something that made her shudder.

Admin continued without giving her the option to respond. “And I know what you’re thinking about the Wards. Do you really think he would just sign you up without talking to you first?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly, almost ashamed of how uncertain that sounded.

“Well, I do,” he said. “He’s a good man. Not perfect, not the best father in the world, but he loves you. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change.”

“But if I tell him about this, I won’t be able to go patrolling,” she tried, though even she could hear how weak it sounded.

“That’s not a problem,” Admin replied immediately. “You don’t need to go patrolling.”

“What?” she asked, sitting up slightly. “How am I supposed to help people if I don’t patrol?”

“If you follow my plan, you’ll help more people than you ever could by patrolling.”

“And for that, I need to talk to Dad?”

He sighed. Again. “Yes.”

Taylor went quiet for a moment, turning the idea over in her head, contemplating the ’plan’.

“Are you absolutely sure it’s necessary?” she asked again.

“Yes, Taylor,” Admin said, irritation clear in his tone.

“And what do I tell him?” she asked, more quietly now.

“I suggest the truth.”

“Admin, I can’t just tell him everything,” she said, voice tightening. The thought of telling her father what happened to her, what his best friend’s daughter did to her. He already had so few friends; this would crush him.

“You’re worried he’ll choose Alan over you,” he said flatly.

Taylor flinched.

“He is his best frie–” she started, but Admin cut in.

“Don’t be an idiot, Taylor. Your father will choose you, no matter what. To even suggest something different is preposterous."

It surprised Taylor that he had such an opinion about her father. But then her thoughts returned to the problem at hand.

While she was thinking, Admin rose into the air and floated in front of her. “Taylor,” he said, more quietly now. “Look at me.”

She looked into his eyes and waited for him to continue.

“Your father loves you. Do not worry.”

She gave a small, hesitant nod. “Okay,” she said.

Admin nodded back and drifted to his chair again.

“Just talk to him, you both need to clear the air,” he said, with a finality that made it clear he considered the matter settled.

Taylor leaned back again, trying to steady herself, because it had been so long since she had properly spoken with her father that she was no longer sure what to expect, only that whatever came would not be simple. Would he be disappointed or angry? The uncertainty was killing her.

To distract herself, she bravely changed the subject. “What time is it even?”

“Around four in the afternoon,” he answered immediately.

“And what day?”

“The fifth.”

“I do not think we spent that much time talking.”

“To be fair, you spent most of it either freaking out or breaking down,” he said.

Taylor huffed in response and glared at Admin. “It’s not like it was my fault.”

They argued about it for a few minutes about whose fault it really was, and by the end, Taylor was again leaning back into her very comfortable chair, confident that she had won that argument.

It was nice to win sometimes.

“How long will I be sleeping?” she asked after a moment, continuing as if the argument had not happened.

“The doctors determined the sedatives will be out of your system today,” he said, “and you will wake tomorrow morning naturally.”

“And I will?” she asked, a flicker of worry returning.

“Yes,” he reassured her “I will wait until your father arrives before waking you.”

Taylor felt the blood freeze inside her, despite knowing well that she was in a virtual space.

“What? That’s not fair!” she exclaimed.

“Tough. I won’t let you weasel out of it."

She huffed again, then leaned back and ordered him to make her the best tea he could manage, and a sunset, because she needed something to sit with while she prepared for what was coming next.

Waking up was another weird experience, because technically, she had been awake for the last few days.

She blinked the gunk out of her eyes, thinking that she could not wait until the brute power kicked in and fixed her vision, although Admin had been very clear that they had to wait until she left the hospital.

While she was cursing the fact that she had to keep her powers secret, someone placed her glasses on her face. A smiling elderly nurse came into view, with a doctor behind her checking a clipboard, and finally her father standing further back, fidgeting like he did not know what to do with himself.

“Good morning, Ms. Hebert,” the nurse said, smiling at her. “How are you feeling?”

Taylor tried to answer, but only a dry cough came out, and the nurse chuckled before helping her drink some water.

She cleared her throat and said, “Hi… where am I?” trying to sound confused, like Admin had told her.

The doctor spoke up while the nurse continued her routine checks. “You are in Brockton Bay Hospital, Ms. Hebert. I’m Dr. Gazby.”

“Oh,” she said, then continued slowly, following the script Admin prepared for her, “so what happened wasn’t a… nightmare?”

“A nightmare?” he repeated. “No, I’m afraid not.”

She closed her eyes at that, because despite everything, she had still hoped it had all been just that.

After a few seconds, the doctor spoke again. “We will need to run a few tests later, but for now, I will leave you with your father.” He smiled at Taylor and her father, nodded to the nurse, and they both left the room.

For a long moment, they just looked at each other, neither of them quite knowing what to say. Her father looked like he was about to spring forward at any second, so she decided to make the first move, because she knew Admin would not let her hear the end of it otherwise.

She raised her arms invitingly.

The next moment, he was there, hugging her tightly, murmuring how much he loved her and how worried he had been, and she hugged him back, and for a little while, everything felt okay.

After a talk with her dad, where they both agreed that they should talk properly later, but that the hospital was not the place for it, Danny simply told her to rest.

They spent about an hour talking about smaller, inconsequential things, news, and everyday updates, carefully avoiding the elephant in the room until the doctor eventually returned with a list of tests to run.

Her father hugged her again, told her he had a bit of work to take care of, and then left her in the hands of the healthcare staff.

By the time they were done with her, it was clear she had no real problems, and according to them, she had been extremely lucky not to pick up anything from the locker, though she said nothing and only thought that it was not luck at all but Admin keeping her safe.

At least he was useful for that.

After that, her only options were watching TV or sleeping, so she turned it on, cycling through channels without really paying attention, finding nothing worth watching, until she decided that sleep was the better option.

She was about to return to bed after a quick trip to the bathroom when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled around, ready for anything.

But all she saw was Admin hovering there with a cheeky smile.

“Hello, Taylor.”

“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “What if someone sees you?”

“Don’t worry, only you can see or hear me,” he replied.

That made her pause, then sigh at the absurdity of it all as she climbed back into bed.

“So I only get to look crazy talking to empty air. Joy.”

“Yes, that can happen,” he said with a small smile. “I promise I will only appear when you are alone.”

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “So why are you here now?”

“Just checking on you,” he replied. “And to tell you that as soon as you leave the hospital, I will begin the body upgrade.”

“I thought that already happened?” she asked.

“No, only the brain upgrade.”

“What about the rest of my power? I couldn’t do anything when I tried,” she said, accusingly.

He shrugged. “I haven’t turned it on yet. I didn’t want you to out yourself by being careless or too emotional.”

She glared at him, ignoring the fact that if her power had been active at the time, there would have been a hole in the bathroom wall.

“I will turn it on after you talk with your father. You can practice over the weekend.”

She huffed and pulled the blanket up over herself. “Fine!”

“Good night, Taylor!”

She didn’t deign him with an answer.

By the time a nurse checked the room later, she was already fast asleep, the weight of the previous days finally catching up to her.

The car ride back home was silent, Taylor looking out of the window and dreading the coming conversation, while Danny gripped the wheel a little tighter than necessary,

The air felt heavy to Taylor. Not in a bad way. Her father felt determined, and she was ready to talk, but she still had a small fear that everything would go wrong.

Yet nothing happened.

They arrived without fuss. Her dad escorted her in, then told her to go upstairs, take a shower, and change. She agreed readily, since the hospital shower was no substitute for the real thing. He said he would get pizza while she did that.

Walking into the house, she was surprised that nothing had changed, before realizing there was no reason it would have yet.

On her way upstairs, she glanced into her father’s room and saw several boxes and an unusually large stack of papers on his desk. That was odd. He sometimes brought work home, but never boxes.

She shrugged and went to take a shower.

When she came back down in fresh clothes, toweling her hair, she saw her father in the living room. Two pizza boxes were on the table, along with the stack of papers. He was sipping from a teacup, looking out the window.

When he heard her reach the bottom of the stairs, he looked at her and smiled. “Better?”

She gave a small smile back. “So much. Thanks.”

He nodded, set the cup down. “Let’s eat, then we can talk.”

Taylor just nodded, sat down across from him, and took a slice of warm pizza.

Watching the father-daughter duo eat their pizza in silence, he felt conflicted.

He could have approached Taylor in several ways.

He could have gone in with full control, but given what he knew and could predict about both Taylor and Danny, that approach would almost certainly result in them eventually noticing something was wrong, and once that happened, his credibility would be gone.

Going in with full truth would have been worse in a different way, likely confusing Taylor or pushing her further off balance than she already was, and the Simulator’s projections had placed a disturbingly high probability on that outcome.

He knew she was strong, or would be strong, but dropping all of this on someone after something like the locker incident simply didn’t feel right.

Unfortunately, due to his damaged state, he could not properly access the wider network for the data he would normally rely on to refine predictions, and while at first he had assumed the limited range around him would be enough, it had become increasingly clear that the external variables were far more involved in Taylor’s case than he expected.

And he did not even have the best tools for this kind of forecasting. The shards specialized in prediction had, over countless cycles, evolved systems capable of constructing intricate long-term plans for the Entities themselves, and compared to them, he was like a kid playing with toys.

Yes, he had usurped a powerful shard, but its strength had never been raw power so much as versatility, intelligence, and access, the kind of function that worked behind the scenes to implement changes across other shards when the Entities demanded it.

So he had started from nothing, building his own predictive framework around Taylor instead, and while it was still crude, it was improving, especially now that she had triggered and her defensive layers were in place, allowing him to increase his scanning range slightly without immediate risk, though he still avoided pushing it too far until he was certain it could handle resistance from a properly developed precognitive systems.

In the end, things had gone better than he had expected.

He had not needed to manufacture an artificial personality, and Taylor herself had turned out to be exactly what he had anticipated in broad strokes: moody, intelligent, and feeling the effects of being recently betrayed.

He hated that he had to let things reach this point at all, but the alternative – starting earlier and risking invalidating everything he knew – would have been far worse. In exchange, he intended, if possible, to make it up to her.

The interaction itself had gone as well as it realistically could have. Without allowing her to find friction points, her paranoia would have made cooperation impossible, and while the method was manipulative, it was also necessary if he wanted any chance of guiding her at all.

Hopefully, this victory would boost her confidence in herself and allow him to capitalize on it in order to steer her out of depression.

Now all he had to do was prove to Taylor that he was on her side while she was actively looking for signs of betrayal.

It would be rough going for a while, but in the end, it would be worth it.

Now he just had to see what Danny wanted to talk about and turn on her power.

He had started applying the Brute enhancements as soon as they left the hospital, and the optional quantum lock was already active, set to protect Taylor in case she suffered damage that her upgraded body and regeneration could not handle.

He had also expanded the scanning radius around her, hoping it would improve his predictive software, even if only incrementally.

He considered, briefly, whether it would be useful to take over an insignificant power as a proxy for database access, even thinking about whether Sophia’s shard could be reached, before dismissing it for now as unnecessary risk.

Of course, if the conversation became too emotional, he would not activate anything further, since the likelihood of Taylor demolishing the house in that state was unacceptably high.

And just because he felt like it, he decided he might turn her hair bright pink the next morning.

Call him mucus, would she?