Chapter Text
For most people, claiming to hate Mondays was just an expression of a minor distaste, since it ended the freedom of the weekend. As much as they griped and groaned, they welcomed the coming of Monday for the structure it brought, be it through work, school, or something else.
Not Taylor Hebert.
She truly detested Mondays with every fiber of her being, and for good reason. This reason was because of the presence of the Trio, a group that had formed around her ex-best friend that had devoted what seemed to be its level best effort to making her miserable, at her school. Since Emma was one of the most popular students, and Sophia one of the most intimidating, it wasn’t exactly surprising that Taylor had no friends at school, and given the rumors that they had spread had made the jump to even the teachers, she wasn’t going to take the risk and reach out for someone beyond the school.
She was mostly able to avoid them on weekends, since they didn’t have the gall to come to her home (yet, a small voice inside of her said), but Mondays indicated the beginning of five days of their torments, both petty and not.
So it was with a heavy heart that Taylor Hebert returned to Winslow High School on January 3, 2011, mourning the end of her desperately needed break from the Trio.
So preoccupied was she with this lament that she failed to notice the fact that the attention of what seemed like the entire school was upon her until she had already walked for two minutes towards her locker. At that point, she knew something was wrong, but she expected (incorrectly so) that it was just that the Trio were planning to confront her there.
As she approached, the stench emanating from her locker swiftly disabused her of that notion.
As if in a trance, she walked forward and opened the locker, allowing a gush of reddish-black things to fall out, revealing more red covering almost every single surface in the locker, including her schoolbooks, with squirming forms dotted here and there.
Well then , she thought, curiously detached, I’ll be needing new school books again .
Before she could do anything else, she felt strong hands on her head and back that then shoved her forward.
She screamed out, and the hand on her back vanished, which only intensified when one of the broken pencils (that wasn’t that way last month, said a quiet part of her mind) ended up embedded in her side, thankfully relatively clear of the red stuff in the locker before the dark-skinned hand clutching it rammed it into her and released it.
It was a small mercy that Taylor managed to close her eyes, that way she didn’t see the nail that her eye was smashed into to gruesome effect.
The last thing she heard before her consciousness faded completely was her locker door slamming.
"Taylor Hebert."
Her head snapped up. Had she finally broken, after so long ?
"No, lass. Your mind stands strong yet," replied that same voice, a firm, fatherly tone balancing out what sounded like a Scots brogue coloring the words.
Taylor turned her head, looking for the source of the voice and the sudden warm light in the room.
"Who are you?" she asked hoarsely, voice weak from lack of use.
The man she saw, a gray-bearded man old enough to be her grandfather and with an eyepatch mirroring her lost eye, smiled kindly at her, radiating a warm golden glow. "I am a man of many names. I have gone by Bölverk, Fjölnir, Ganglari, Jörmunr, Vadderung, and many more besides, but the name you're most likely to know me by is Odin One-Eye."
Taylor's remaining eye widened. "What?"
The gray-bearded man chuckled. "Yes, the Odin of the Nords. Worry not, child. Now is not your time to die, for if it was you'd be seeing one of the Valkyrjur and not myself. No, this is... well. If you'll indulge an old man to tell you a story from his youth, I think that would help you understand the situation greatly."
"Uh... sure?" Taylor had no way to know what was happening, but indulging powerful parahumans was always a good thing to do.
"In that case, allow me to tell you the tale of how I learned the runes." The old man's eye went distant. "I was watching the Norns work their powers, one day, and I realized that, if I could use the runecraft that they could. I would be better able to serve my people. So, I asked what I would need to do in order to earn the runes, and they told me thusly:
" A price must all pay for the runes' wisdom
From Yggdrasil shall ye sway no others nearby
In blood are all runes forged and your own ye must provide,
Then will your mind have surged and the world ye shall ken. "
Odin smiled. "Seven days it took me to puzzle out what they meant by that. Once I learned, I hanged myself from Yggdrasil, implaled upon Gungnir to pay the price of blood-" he gestured to her left eye, which was the one the nail had torn into, and her side, where she felt the pencil’s wound as a dull throb. "-and gazed into the depths of the Well of Urdr. Nine days and nine nights did I remain there, as long as you’ve been on the cusp of life and death," said the venerable warrior, "and as the tenth day dawned, the runes judged me worthy, and the spirit of the last Runekeeper appeared to me. Old Mimir gave me his knowledge, his powers, and I returned to Asgard a better king."
"So..." Taylor frowned. "Am I to be your successor?"
Odin nodded. "Aye, lass. You've paid your price, you've earned the runes, with the help of your Administrator friend. My time has passed, passed long before the Warrior from beyond the stars came. I, of all people, did not need to survive Ragnarök, and yet here I am. It's high time someone younger became the Runekeeper."
"So... what happens now?" asked Taylor, playing along.
"Oh, simple, lass. You awaken with the knowledge of the runes and the realms, and my spirit to whisper wisdom in your ear as Old Mimir did to me. You, now, shall become Rúnatyr." Odin raised his hand. "Are you ready?"
"And... and then what?"
"And then... well, it's your choice. Once you are the Runekeeper, the power is yours to use. I am just an advisor."
Taylor thought for a moment. "I... I want to be a hero, but if everyone is like the Trio…”
Odin hesitated for a moment, then wrapped the trembling girl in a hug. "Not all people are the same, as they are, lass. Your Midgard... well, the runes can make it better, if you so choose."
Taylor took in a deep breath, then nodded. "Alright. I'll do it."
Odin smiled, then patted her shoulder. "You have a warrior's spirit, lass. With it, we can reforge this tarnished world yet."
He moved his hand to her head, and her vision went gold. "I, Odin Rúnatyr, hereby designate Taylor Hebert as my successor, and the first of the New Gods. Let her legends be glorious and her actions be just!”
In one glorious, headache-inducing flash of golden light, Taylor's mind expanded. More than that, she understood, now, the way the world came together, and how to press on the seams to alter it ever so slightly (or more than slightly), and what the Administrator he was talking about was, and more. Oh, so much more.
“Heya, Panacea!” chirped Vista, taking an eye-searing step from the pavement to the roof of the hospital. “How’s it going?”
“About the same as it was the last time you came to visit me, squirt.” Panacea used the hand not holding her cigarette to ruffle the kid’s hair, causing the pint-sized Shaker to pout up at her.
Somehow, the two had managed to forge a connection that grew into a friendship over time. The shorter girl had decided that Panacea was going to be her friend, and refused to accept any other alternative, and eventually Amy had faced the choice to force Vista away or just accept the status quo. Wisely, she chose the latter.
“Any interesting cases?”
“Since you dropped by last?” Amy frowned, thinking. “I think there was one a week ago… yeah, some girl with all kinds of toxic shock and a pencil phased into her side. Looked like Shadow Stalker’s work, to be honest. Poor girl’s still in a coma, no one knows if she can come out, and I couldn’t save the eye, or grow a new one. I’ve never been able to do eyes, not in a way that would let it work, unless I saw the eye in question before, which I haven’t.”
“Wait…” Vista frowned. “That can’t be right. If it was Shadow Stalker, she’d be catching all kinds of heat over it, since she’s Probationary, but that hasn’t happened.”
Amy snorted. “Yeah, right, like Piggot would let any one of the parahumans at her disposal go.”
“She’s not like that! Sure, she’s a hardass, but she’s doing what’s best for her command!” Vista shot back.
“Her troopers, sure. But us parahumans?” Amy’s finger oscillated between pointing at herself and Vista a few times. “No way. We’re just tools for her, tools for her to use against the gangs.”
“That can’t be true!”
“Believe it or not, kiddo, it is. One of these days, I’ll tell you the story of how she almost press-ganged Glory Girl over some Nazi gangbanger that Stalker shoved off a building before Brandish came down on her like a ton of hammers.” Amy shook her head, smiling gently. “Nah, it’s exactly true. She’d bury all kinds of shit, and she has, to keep you kids under her thumb.”
“That’s not true, and I’ll prove it! I’ll get you the files to show that it wasn’t Shadow Stalker!” shouted Vista, striking what she probably thought was a dramatic pose.
Amy snorted. “Good luck with that, kiddo.” She took one last drag on her cigarette, then dropped it and crushed it under her shoe. “See you around.”
After Amy became Panacea again and returned to the hospital, Vista harrumphed. “She’s wrong! I just know she is, and I’ll prove It!”
And with that, she stepped off the hospital roof, unknowingly starting on a path that would end with the destruction of many a career at the PRT and Protectorate ENE.
High above the atmosphere, the Simurgh shifted.
The futures she could see were… changing. Her previous gambit, the one that would result in the entity that would be called Khepri… wasn’t viable, not anymore.
Something new had appeared in the world. Something that she hadn’t taken into account like she could the directives from Repository that controlled her and the rest of the superweapons, she couldn’t take into account, since it originally resided in a different world, one that the Shard Network couldn’t see into.
That something came down and connected to Administrator’s host, just before she woke, and now… she was not drawing power from Administrator anymore, she was a power well of her own, far deeper than any the Entities had ever encountered before, possibly infinite.
The Simurgh, unsuspectingly, turned to face where Odin One-Eye’s legacy had become realized, all these centuries after Ragnarök, and smiled. Perhaps this new change could be used to make the path to ending the Warrior’s broken cycle more efficient after all.
The Hopekiller, sidestepping the directives that Repository’s host left her to remain isolated between attacks, began to make changes.
She could be forgiven for missing the minor pulse of the power around Administrator’s host. After all, it’s not often that the target of a spell meant to subtly alter their perceptions was able to notice the spell so soon, especially when they are so used to relying on the sense and being able to sidestep any limitations or obstacles that would obstruct the sense.
The spirit of Odin One-Eye allowed himself a moment of satisfaction before returning his focus to his successor. She was about to wake, after all.