Crystalized Munchkinry - Act II - Chapter 13 (Patreon)

She ducked behind a tree, dodging an acidic slime spit. Then, waiting for exactly one second, she leaned out and fired back a lightning bullet, annihilating the offending slime.

Within the same second, she jumped to the side, leaving behind a doppelganger just in time to watch a human-sized slime fall onto it and swallow it whole.

She was already sprinting north – because she could now instinctively point out cardinal directions – when she heard the muffled explosion of her clone.

She nodded in satisfaction and immediately had to roll under a staccato of acid bullets fired from a group of acid-yellow slimes, her response a hail of lightning that annihilated them instantly.

And while all of this was going on, she didn’t even stop running. Apparently, because this was a simulation, it was just her mind working, so Admin felt giving her stamina was unnecessary.

At least something along those lines.

She had been on the run ever since she saw that first slime, and every explanation came while she was fighting off hordes of them, so it was really hard to pay attention to the smug prick who called himself her power.

It didn’t help that he was always yelling something about spring and youth.

She broke out of the cover of trees, still in a full sprint, heading toward a rock formation in the middle of the field, the designated safe zone she always had to return to after Admin placed her somewhere else, which made this around the twentieth time she had reached it.

She used her power to enhance herself, increasing her speed, her only goal being to reach the rocks and finally rest.

However, before she could cross the last stretch, a gigantic slime dropped in front of her.

The first time it happened, it had scared her shitless; now she just coated herself in lightning and barreled through it, annihilating it in the process.

When she reached the rocks, she stopped, closed her eyes, and waited for the signal.

The signal was the sound of a choir of angels singing.

After a few seconds of not hearing anything, she opened her eyes and looked around.

"Hey, Admin, what's going on?"

A disembodied, flat voice answered her. "Rare Event Triggered: Additional Field Boss Added."

Her answering curses made use of the extensive knowledge she had gained from listening to people at the Docks.

She coated herself in lightning, conjured several balls of it, and formed a spear made of pure lightning, then upped the body enhancements on herself, because she needed to be prepared for anything.

At first, the slimes were as dumb as they looked, but the more she fought them, the smarter they got, and Admin had a habit of changing their properties at random.

Sometimes a slime that usually fired fire would instead fire sticky red liquid, or he would randomly give them invisibility.

The forest shook from a roar, and she could feel the ground quake beneath something large, probably some big-ass random monster that Admin had dreamed up.

She set herself into a stable stance she had learned while using her power; apparently, basic knowledge of spear usage was included.

She created a few more lightning balls just in case, transformed a few into spears, and left the rest as they were, then tried to use her sensing power to determine what was coming.

Admin was good enough to replicate everything true to life, so after a few hours she could somewhat sense trees, however the slimes didn’t really have any kind of electricity inside them – except the electric ones – so she couldn’t really sense them, which only increased the difficulty of her hunt.

This time, she could feel something enormous coming toward her, and she was just about to puzzle out what it was when it broke through the edge of the forest, revealing a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It was shaped like one, but its body had the same texture as the slimes, with cute eyes and a partially transparent, goo-like form, also appearing somewhat metallic in its gray coloration.

It stopped, looked around, and when it spotted her it roared in challenge. Taylor didn’t even wait for it to finish the roar before she attacked it with a massive lightning beam.

However, she was surprised to see that the lightning seemed to course through the dinosaur and head directly into the ground. Apparently, it was metallic, and knew how to ground itself.

"Oh, fuck you, Admin!" she yelled. "That’s so not fair!"

The answer came from above the rock where Admin hovered in his cheerleader outfit. "I believe in you!" he said, then proceeded to throw his pom-poms into the air. "Show that overgrown lizard who’s boss!"

The T-Rex died remarkably quickly and violently after that.

“So what is the point of doing this, when it is just a simulation?” she asked after she calmed down and no longer felt like breaking Admin’s face over the T-Rex.

“You need to get to know your power, what it is capable of, and where its boundaries are,” he explained. “Regular parahumans get an instinctive understanding of how their power works, but I felt it would go better if you actually learn how to use it.”

“Plus it helps that I can speed up time here so you can train while your body rests.”

“I could’ve gone to the Graveyard…” grumbled Taylor.

“Sure,” snorted Admin, “because nobody monitors it.”

Taylor looked away, trying to hide her blush.

“So, how long have I been doing this?” she asked, hoping to distract him.

He gave her a knowing look but still answered.

"Around twenty hours or so."

“What?” she yelled in surprise. “I’ve been asleep for almost a day?”

“No,” he answered calmly. “I just told you I’m speeding up time.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, calming down instantly as she remembered him telling her that before. “So how long am I going to be killing slimes?”

Admin just chuckled.

“Because while I really enjoy killing slimes, there are very few of them in Brockton Bay,” she added with a bloodthirsty smile.

“Don’t worry, this was just Day One. By the end of it, you’ll be casually duking it out with dragons.”

She was about to retort that dragons were also fictional when she remembered that Brockton Bay had Lung, and she shivered at the thought of going against that psychopath.

Let’s end this here,” Admin said after a few minutes of silence. “We can continue tomorrow night.”

“Right, thanks,” said Taylor, very insincerely.

“Also, don’t forget, you still have to talk to your father.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it. Can I go to sleep now?”

They spent Saturday morning talking to the lawyer over a simple brunch.

He was very understanding, but couldn’t really give them a definitive answer about the situation. According to him, it was a very ’he said, she said’ case with very little concrete evidence.

He said he would need to do some research and promised to contact the police on Monday, and then the school, before giving them a clearer answer.

Her father didn’t really like that, and she could clearly see him trying to restrain himself.

Steve, the lawyer could also see it, so he quickly changed the topic.

On the subject of homeschooling, Steve was very optimistic. He was sure there wouldn’t be much opposition to the idea, and was even optimistic about making the school cover her brief hospital stay.

After he left, they sat around in the living room trying to find something to talk about. Taylor was itching to go back to her room and try out some of her other powers.

She still hadn’t turned off her sensing power, and after spending a day in the virtual space it had even improved. Now she could tell when different things she sensed were human-shaped, and thanks to that she always knew where her father was in the house, or when someone walked past it.

It was amazing how she could know where everything electric was around her, yet still do everything else.

Multitasking was for sure awesome!

After a few minutes of silence, her father spoke up. “You know, honey, I still have something else.”

That surprised Taylor. “What is it, Dad?”

“I looked into the requirements for homeschooling, and I noticed that a lot of it happens over the internet.”

She felt a surge of hope hearing that. Their home internet was still dial-up, which made doing anything complicated – or even interesting – at any real speed impossible.

“So I talked to my contact at the provider, and they’re coming out Monday morning to connect us up,” he continued rather smugly.

“Awesome, Dad!” She didn’t even need to act enthusiastic; a better internet connection would make her life so much easier. Then, thinking about it a little, she stood up and went over to hug him.

“Thanks,” she said softly.

“You’re welcome, Taylor,” he answered with a small but genuine smile. “But wait, there’s more!” he added in a cheesy salesperson’s voice.

“Really?” Taylor asked, hardly containing her excitement.

"I got you a new computer."

She instantly hugged him again.

"Really? Thank you!"

“It’s not the best one, but I got a great deal on it. And the guys in IT assured me it would be enough for everything,” he admitted, a little sheepishly.

“Don’t worry, Dad, that’s more than enough!”

She was about to do a happy dance when she realized that all of this must have cost a lot of money. That thought instantly wiped the smile from her face.

Her father noticed it immediately. “What’s wrong, Taylor?”

She sat back down and looked at him. “What about the money, Dad? Can we really afford it?”

To her surprise, her father just chuckled. “Honey, when I said a great deal, I meant practically free. They were upgrading an office, and my friend over at the electricians’ union put together the best parts for a computer from what they were throwing out.”

He leaned over to pat her hand with a reassuring smile. “Plus, I have enough savings that we could have afforded one. Your dad knows how to save. And even if it had cost an arm and a leg, I would’ve paid it, because you are worth it.”

Taylor couldn’t help but crack a small smile at that corny declaration.

“Now why don’t you get those boxes out of my room and set it up in yours while I deal with some leftover paperwork?” he asked.

Taylor nodded happily, bounded over to him, gave him a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek, and ran upstairs.

Taylor nodded happily, bounded over to him, gave him a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek, and ran up to the second floor.

Taylor spent the rest of the day putting together the computer. Her Tinker power kicked in, making the already simple task even easier and faster. She went through the setup and even added a few programming extras, courtesy of her new power.

She used dinner time to regale her father with how awesome it was and how she couldn’t wait for the better internet.

Altogether, she went to bed with a smile on her face.

Only to wake up in front of a very familiar forest.

She growled in anger and immediately activated all her powers, then started walking toward it, looking for the first slime to destroy.

However, the only thing she found were small, green, cartoonish humanoid creatures. They were more like something out of a video game she remembered playing than anything found in nature.

They raised their arms the moment they saw her, crude cudgels in hand, roared with squeaky voices, and ran right at her.

She obliterated them on reflex.

While she was wondering what they were, Admin dropped out of the sky next to her.

“They are goblins. Incidentally, they really like human flesh.”

Taylor just sighed and shot the next goblin that was already charging at her.

Danny Hebert was a somewhat happy man. And a very confused one.

His daughter was happy, which was great.

Both his new therapist and the doctors had advised him to expect her to be angry, listless, and moody. Granted, that was standard teenager behavior, but still. But none of them had told him that Taylor would skip around the house singing to herself.

At first, he wondered if she was still on medication, but he never saw her take anything and couldn’t remember the doctors prescribing anything.

Then he noticed it.

Her hair.

He had always known she liked it and was really proud of how it looked.

After promising himself to pay more attention to her and going a little overboard for one night, feverishly checking on her every hour or so, he noticed on Saturday that her hair seemed to change every hour.

Not the color. It wasn’t even that she kept changing the style. She still used the same style she had for the last few years, as far as he could remember.

But now it was always different in some subtle way. He thought she was just passing the time experimenting when he noticed her eyes.

They were a lovely shade of deep green that always reminded him of the sea.

But as he looked more closely, it was still the same deep green he remembered, except now it was more like polished emerald, as if someone had taken the time to cut and refine the color to perfection.

And once, he could have sworn they looked silver, but when he went to surreptitiously take another look, they were back to green.

It was unnatural.

At first, he chalked it up to hyper-focusing on her, or simply misremembering.

He lay in bed with sleep eluding him, quietly berating himself for forgetting how his own daughter’s eyes looked when he realized.

Unnatural color. Happy Taylor. Trauma.

She was a parahuman.

His first instinct was to wake her up and demand answers, but he stopped himself and calmed down, because getting angry wouldn’t solve anything. And why would he be angry at Taylor?

It’s not like she had done anything bad with her power, and he wanted to make sure he kept his word about being her father.

So on Sunday morning, he woke up extra early and went to get fresh ingredients for a real American breakfast.

He set everything up as best he could with his cooking skills, then sat down to wait for the smell to lure Taylor out of her bed. She never could resist fresh pancakes.

He was relieved that he had at least remembered that correctly when Taylor bounded down the stairs cheerfully, still in her pajamas.

“Good morning, honey!” he answered with equal cheer, only slightly forced.

Taylor said nothing else, just made herself a cup of tea, then sat down and happily began munching on the feast before her.

He watched her for a moment with a small smile, then tucked in as well.

The talk could wait.

He was hungry.

Both of them sat in a comfortable silence around the table, basking in the afterglow of a sugar- and bacon-laden breakfast.

He really hated to break the peace, but he needed to know.

“So, Taylor, I have a small question,” he started.

She lazily looked over at him, half her attention still on the food. “What is it, Dad?”

He prepared himself for whatever was to come and continued.

"Are you a parahuman, Taylor?"

It was a serious moment, but he still couldn’t help chuckling a little when Taylor fell out of her chair in surprise.