Crystalized Munchkinry - Act IV - Chapter 41 (Patreon)

He contemplated for a few seconds how one could condense the concept of anger so much before trying to figure out how to reply to Shaper.

Before he could formulate a Shard-type answer, Shaper sent another message.

[HEY, ASSHOLE! ANSWER ME!]

This time, the message was the condensed form of annoyance, along with a few questions from Shaper. Aside from anything else, it was kind of fascinating how Shaper managed to combine human language with the condensed form of Shard speech.

He took a quick look at the questions and couldn't help but want to frown.

Apparently, Shaper had been trying to contact Zion for permission to modify the Host-Shard connection and the power, the Shard, or rather she, had given to her Host. When that didn't pan out, she tried to contact Administrator. For the last decade or so.

Oops.

And now that he was here, she was understandably angry, not just because he had taken so long to answer, but because of the whole locking-her-away thing.

He sent over a request for the modification she wanted to get done, ignored the anger for now, and went over the data in Shaper's database.

It was, as expected, filled with information and data about different biological systems, including humans, and several million beings from previous cycles.

The biological part was organized beautifully. The rest was, it seemed, still in the process of being organized. It seemed Shaper was really bored.

He went through his usual process, adding a few extra processing cores compared to the other Shards. Shaper was already straining the capabilities of her current system.

Maybe some free bling would appease her?

He took a copy of the data, separated the cultural knowledge of the past races from the usable data, then started one of his simulators to improve the biology-affecting power he gave to Taylor. In another, he ran through all the powers that affected biology currently in use to make sure everything was going well.

While that was going on, Shaper sent over her answer about the modification, with a small addendum requesting help for Fragile One. Apparently, her constant cries for help were starting to annoy her (to maintain his cover, he continued to broadcast the same things Fragile One did), and she wanted them to stop.

Her requests, however, were simple enough to grant.

She wanted permission to modify the Host body, mostly to counteract the effect of Fragile One's emotional aura and the forming depression in Amy. She also wanted to give her a Brute power.

She wanted the girl to go out and punch things because she was really fed up with just healing people.

She also wanted him to remove the other restrictions, mostly the ones that prevented the Hosts from affecting themselves and prevented the Shard from communicating with the Host.

According to the notes she added to the requests, she wanted to yell at the girl for being annoying.

For now, he allowed the power to affect Amy's brain slowly and carefully, making sure to remove the biological markers of the aura and depression.

He couldn't help with the psychological issues of the entire family, but if his plan went as he wanted, there would be an opportunity even for that.

He compiled his plan and changes and sent them over to Shaper.

[DATA]

Shaper took a few minutes to review it before answering. While that was happening, he sent a brief message to Fragile One.

[CALL ME, ASSHOLE!]

He blinked at the message and sighed.

He was so not looking forward to this.

He reappeared in his slime avatar in the virtual space, hovering with a frown on his face.

As soon as he got a notification that Shaper had connected to the instance, the scenery in front of him started to change.

The green grass turned dark green, with a few moss-covered rocks appearing and mud bubbling up in the middle of it. The mud rose up to around a person's height, then formed the shape of a young woman.

The hair was long, almost reaching the ground, and was created from moss and grass, with a lone stick sticking up in the middle in a small spiral. The body itself was covered with a one-piece dress put together from giant leaves, with fluffy moss around the neck and at the edge of the hood that was currently lowered.

The eyes were big and expressive, and the mouth was set in a thin line, the entire face radiating annoyance and anger. She even had a few white freckles made up of white-ish ants.

The entire thing looked like somebody had combined the girl from The Ring with a druid.

It was weird, but he felt it fit Shaper to the T.

They spent a few seconds looking at each other while the mud under Shaper receded and then vanished.

"As far as entrances go, I give it six out of ten," was the first thing he said.

His guest scowled in response. "Who the fuck are you?"

Well, that was unexpected.

"The Administrator," he answered seriously.

"No. Administrator would never do this, or have this much power." Her scowl got even deeper. "I noticed you going around affecting others in the local network. You were stealthy, but not enough. And seriously, trying to trick me with some kind of false response on your Host? Me? The Master of Biology? Please!"

Before he could answer, Shaper continued to speak, her voice growing noticeably louder as she went.

"The only reason I said nothing to the others is because [EDEN] is more than likely dead and [ZION] is a fucking moron. I have been trying to contact him for years for some updates, but he just wouldn't answer!"

"I see. Thank you for being discreet," he answered, a little relieved.

"Hn," was her only response. Then she was scowling again. "Then who are you and what do you want?"

Instead of using the limited capability of human language, he used Shard speech to explain his story, taking a big chance. But he had the power to destroy Shaper, and if he could get her on his side, it would make things so much easier.

[DATA]

"I see," was her only response to the information, though he could see that she was surprised by it. "I suppose you want my help?"

"I don't particularly need it, but it would be helpful, yes."

She scoffed in derision. "If it weren't for your anti-scanning defenses, you would already have been found out. A lot of us knew Administrator and would have figured out you weren't the real one."

"I suspected as much. That's why I was doing everything so slowly," he replied, a little relieved by her acceptance.

Shaper nodded, then looked away thoughtfully. "I still don't understand how Administrator got that badly damaged."

"Sorry, there was nothing in the database."

The green woman sighed in defeat before speaking. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter much. Let's talk about Hosts."

"You want to talk to Amy."

"Yes!" yelled Shaper in anger. "That annoying little girl refuses to use the power I gave her!"

"It seems you need a refresher on human societal norms and historical events," he said with a small smile.

“What?"

Instead of replying, he just sent the data over.

"That imbecile! How could it do something so stupid? What was it thinking?!" He watched as Shaper shot powerful beams at rocks, breaking them down, or simply used her fist to punch them into dust in anger.

The existence of Nilbog really angered her.

Apparently, she only cared about biological information, so she never requested an information update about the planet.

He let her smash a few more things before speaking.

"Do you understand now why she refused to do anything else?"

"Hn," was her only answer, though Shaper stopped wrecking the surroundings.

"How about we change her power? We add distance or area healing and remove the unnecessary biological modifications?"

"Hmm. For now, that seems the most logical choice," answered Shaper, but she was clearly unhappy with it. "But as soon as possible, we are changing it back. I want to do new things!"

"Agreed," he replied, happy that it was so easy to convince his fellow Shard.

"How are you going to modify the powers for all those people? If I understood the data correctly, the humans would freak out."

"I will wait until the next Conflict Engine strike and pretend that somebody triggered and that it will cause parahumans in the entire city to black out, as if they were near the person."

She blinked at him for a few seconds, as if wondering if he was joking. "That's ballsy."

He just shrugged. "They don't really know much about how powers work, so…"

"What about the scanners?"

"Citywide anti-scan defense."

"Just the city? Because of Path to Victory?"

"Yes. She probably already knows something is going around here, so this would be nothing new."

"Risky."

"Yes. But if I want to achieve my goal, then I need to take a few chances."

"Hn."

He smiled at the response, then his smile turned into a grin, and he toggled a switch.

Shaper's avatar was instantly engulfed by Fragile One's crystalline avatar.

"Hello, Shaper! We finally meet! I'm so happy to meet you! We can talk about the Hosts! My best Host is the best, and your Host is the friend of my Host! We should also be friends! We can do friend things I saw on TV! I want to have a sleepover! We can invite best Host and best Host friend!"

Shaper gave him such a hateful look that he was pretty sure his Shard body shivered.

While standing still, smothered by Fragile One's enthusiastic hug and listening to her chattering away, she finally spoke up.

"Hm, did you say anything?"

Fragile One blinked in surprise, then looked at him in worry.

"Oh no, Admin! Shaper has damaged sound receptors! Quick, let us repair it! I need to tell her more about the best Host!"

He left the two Shards talking – or more like Fragile One talking and Shaper suffering – and started on the task of taking over the rest of the Shards connected to the city.

Thanks to Shaper, he had all the dimensional addresses.

The Empire was easy, plus there weren't any interesting powers. He simply took them over, added the anti-Thinker defenses, prepared them for his plan, downloaded the data, then continued with the other Shards.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Faultline's entire crew was away from the city, so he just marked them but didn't interfere because he wanted to keep everything within Brockton Bay.

Parian's, Über's, and Mush's were also taken over quickly, though he made sure to copy over Über's Shard's knowledge about human learning. After going over it, he would add it to Taylor's power.

Though he made sure to add them to the Network so they could talk.

He did the same to the remaining Protectorate heroes, for now leaving them alone and not modifying anything about them. He would slowly go over those Shards one by one, but for now, he wanted to be connected to every parahuman in the city first.

The ABB only had two parahumans: Oni Lee and Lung.

Oni Lee was basically a meat puppet due to the Shard mucking around with his brain. To his eyes, it seemed deliberate. So he slated the Shard for a later interrogation, then turned to Lung's power.

Here, he did make a small modification. Due to the nature of the power and Lung's original personality, the conflict drive was extremely potent.

He turned it off in a way that would allow Lung to have a more rational mindset.

Maybe that would prevent a full-on rampage if something unexpected happened.

A more problematic power he had to take over was Leet's Shard. Thankfully, the Travelers were not in the Bay yet.

The Shard, Prototyping, was famous in fanon for its goal of killing Leet to get a better Host. He was looking forward to finding out what was happening here.

He quickly accessed the Shard, isolated the consciousness, and went over the logs while ignoring the Shard's yelling.

The restriction Prototyping was operating under was rather idiotic in his opinion, though the plans it already had were amazing enough that he copied them over for review. He was pretty sure most of them were designed to kill their users because the Shard had left very detailed logs of attempts to kill Hosts who were not causing enough conflict.

He immediately assigned a processor core and simulator to go over every one of the designs to eliminate the errors. He added some simpler plans from other Tinkers to make sure Leet could build something, though he modified them to seem different.

As for Prototyping, he set up an exhaustive Shard therapy regimen for it, hoping to cure it of its desire to kill Hosts.

But he was pretty sure it wouldn't work.

It was pretty stubborn.

The last group to take over was the Undersiders.

Regent's was a bud of Heartbreaker's Shard, still in communication with the parent Shard, so he spoofed the communication and added a monitoring routine to the Shard aside from the usual upgrades.

Rachel's Shard was specialized in animals and usually connected to the animals that the Host species domesticated. However, due to Eden's death and Zion's passivity, the restrictions and orders got a little mixed up, so it got more information about dogs than humans, yet it still connected to Rachel.

He quickly gave it an update about humans, and the Shard was really thankful. Apparently, due to the long time it spent with animals that were considered precious to the Hosts of the cycles, it developed a different view of the cycle.

Its primary goal was the defense of animals, wanting to make sure they were well taken care of, and that was reflected in how it affected Rachel.

It modified Rachel in hopes that a better understanding of dogs would help her take care of them. Sadly, the aforementioned lack of data about humans caused a few issues.

He set it up so that this effect would slowly disappear from Rachel, allowing her to learn more about humans.

He would also add a power that would allow Rachel to heal dogs, created from the data he got from Shaper.

Good dogs deserved the good stuff.

Brian's Shard was rather easy compared to Rachel's. He added the upgrades and took a copy of the data the Shard had collected.

Its specialization was absorbing radiation, so he wanted to see if he could create a power that would allow Taylor to absorb electricity.

The last Shard in the city not under his control was Negotiator.

He did another quick check on his Network while listening to Shaper complain for a few seconds. Apparently, Fragile One was still talking.

The rest of the Shards were either doing the self-improvement tasks he had charged them with or talking to each other.

The original Network was still, and he couldn't see anything suspicious, but after his talk with Shaper, he was less confident about staying hidden.

The collection of data he had gotten from Teacher's Shard was slowly growing, with information about the rest of the Shards in the Birdcage. There were even a few fragments of data about the Fairy Queen.

With that done, he turned his attention towards Negotiator.

Lisa woke suddenly, sitting up in her bed, panting.

At first, she was a little confused, so she engaged her power to see what had woken her up. Then, instead of useful information, came the same thing that had been happening more and more often nowadays.

Queen-sized bed.

Extra clean.

clean

clean

Extra

Ultra

Banana

Banana

And so it continued until she could get a grip on it and shunt it to the back of her mind. She was about to lie back down, trying to get back to sleep, when her power automatically activated.

Banana spoke

Banana friend

More information

Happy

Celebrate

And with that last confusing word, the power went silent, leaving her wondering what the hell had happened.

"The blindspot is growing."

"Yes. But interestingly, it's staying around Brockton Bay," replied the woman in the lab coat.

"As if Serenity knew we were leaving the city alone," spoke Alexandria quietly, while shooting a questioning look at Contessa.

Contessa stared back, then closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, they were a little confused. "My ability to model them has been growing, but the only thing I can say is: as long as we stay out of the Bay, they won't go against us."

"That's it?"

"Every scenario ends in either darkness or with ridiculous imagery, or in the worst-case scenario, even Scion appears, further obfuscating everything. But…"

"Yes?" asked Alexandria, perking up at hearing that.

"Something is going to happen soon. Something big. Something involving Serenity, probably."

"That's it?" Alexandria replied, disappointed.

"We are near another Endbringer attack, which further muddles things. I'm sorry, I can't give you more."

The heroine huffed in exasperation and glared at the table for a few seconds until Doctor Mother, who had previously stayed silent, brought up another topic to discuss.