Celestial Worm Pt 5 (Patreon)

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @Fizzfaldt and beta-read by the author of Ties that Bind.]

Janesha

“Wow.” Taylor put her cutlery down on her plate and pushed it away from her. “That was amazing, Janesha. Can you make any meal like that?” She stifled an incipient belch.

Janesha grinned. Braised pork with truffles was just one of a thousand meals she could recreate, now that her shifting ability had manifested. “My dad’s a touch shifter from Rangi-Tuarea, so once I hit twelve my shifting ability came into its own.”

Taylor tilted her head to one side. “Rangi-where-a?”

A chuckle crept up Janesha’s throat. “Realm of Oceanics. My father is the god of the Air in Rangi-Tuarea.”

“This is going to sound really dumb,” Danny said, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table. “But what makes one power more dominant than the other?” When Janesha looked at him, he cleared his throat and added, “That is…assuming you’ve had your mind-bending powers your whole life.”

“Quick, as always,” Janesha murmured. “Yeah, as powerful as my dad is, my mom’s family are from the next tier up. One on one, outside their realms, mom trumps dad all day long. Range will always piss all over touch.”

“Janesha,” Danny scolded.

“What?” Looking at her host, one word leapt out of his surface thoughts. Language! She couldn’t help but grimace. “Oh, no,” she groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them...”

“One of what?”

Janesha raised both hands and made air quotes. “I do not approve of profanity in my presence, young lady.” Biting back the not so idle threat that accompanied that phrase, she crossed her eyes and poked out her tongue, not appreciating the way Danny chuckled lightly.

“Heard that line before, have you?”

Janesha screwed up her nose and shrugged. “One of my aunts is like psychotically against bad language, and anyone who upsets her has to answer to my Uncle Avis. Not only that, but one of my cousins has the power to make damn sure you never want to use bad language in her presence ever again. They both suck for it.”

Danny’s grin lengthened parentally. “So, one of the queens of Mystal is against bad language?”

“She knows we all do it and doesn’t try to stop us as a whole. We’re just not allowed to do it around her.”

“Any chance you can add me to that list?”

Janesha looked across the table at her host. He had no idea what he was asking. The only person to ever get a Mystallian to curb their language was the wife of Mystal’s Life Court ruler. Celestials rarely made promises to mortals, and he had already drawn on his lifetime quota by getting her to stay out of his head. Well … his, and by proxy … Taylor’s. Still, this didn’t seem like too big an ask, provided he didn’t want anything else. “I will attempt to curb it around you, Danny, but if I say it, you must let it go. Swearing is second nature to Mystallians, and it took one of our queens to make us curb it for just one person. Her.”

“I can appreciate that, so I’ll meet you in the middle. You try not to swear around me, and I’ll try not to give you a hard time when it slips out.”

“And I get to moderate both of you!” Taylor interceded, with a gleeful clap of her hands.

Janesha slid her eyes to Taylor, who looked from her to her left, where Danny sat, and back again. “Wow, that wasn’t half creepy at all. You two looked like something out of a haunted house, the way you both turned that death stare on me.”

“Going back to what you were saying about power,” Danny lowered his hands and folded them loosely over the table.

“Yeah, well, there’s three types of power for a celest. Mind-bending, shape-shifting and emotion weaving. There’s not a lot of weavers about the place, so for now, we can leave them out of it. Each side has a three tiered system. Personal, touch and ranged. If a celest can trace their bloodline to a power tier, whichever side has the higher tier is the one that the child will be born with. The other, if it exists, will come in after puberty. That’s why I got dad’s touch shifting a couple of years ago. Since then, I’ve been able to recreate anything I want, as I want it.” She waved across the empty plates. “Hence the meals. We have chefs back home that spend their whole lives applying their culinary trade to meet the approval of the pantheon, and once that’s achieved, they are permitted to serve us. Every meal, I get to see what it looks like, taste what it tastes like. As a shifter, I’d have to rely on memory and probably get the replication wrong at some point, but since I’m primarily a bender, I can internalise, find the memory of any meal I’ve ever had, then re-enter the physical realm to reproduce it at will with shifting.”

“So the higher the tier, the more powerful the power.” Danny again.

“Exactly, and for every ranged celest, there are ten thousand touch celests, and a hundred million personal ones.” She looked at Danny and smirked. “The personal ones make up the commoners, in case you were wondering.”

“Common … celestial,” Danny drew the words out slowly, then closed his eyes and shook his head. “Yet another thing I never thought I’d ever be saying in my lifetime.” He breathed in deeply and opened his eyes again. “Keep that talk up, and you’ll have your own crew of followers believing you’re the Second Coming.”

Janesha shuddered at the possibility, then realised exactly what he’d said. “Fuck that, no!” she said, throwing her hands away from the table as if the surface was coated in poison. “That is the one thing none of us can let happen, or everything will really go pear-shaped, worse than they already are.”

Her adamant reaction got both her new friends’ attention. “What do you mean?” Taylor asked.

“Celestials feed off belief. It’s what powers us. So long as we have mortals believing in us, we take on all the powers and abilities of those beliefs.” She tapped herself in the chest. “Right now, if I wasn’t already a shifter, a celest could come along and drown me in the nearest bucket of water. But if I had believers that genuinely believed I could breathe underwater, I’d suddenly be sucking in that water like air. Now, blow that stupid little example into the bigger picture of extreme capabilities. Celestials shape the mortal realm, but mortal belief is what shapes celestials into gods. Get it?”

“O…kay.” Danny scratched his head. “So, assuming from your violent reaction that this is a two-way street, what's the downside?”

Smart, Danny Hebert. Very smart. “The downside is that unless the celestial is very careful in how she presents herself to the mortals, ideas might creep in that she never asked for and never wanted. Those unwanted limitations, vulnerabilities or behavioural issues will be forced upon us by the belief of our mortals. In essence, it becomes us, and we don’t get a say in it. In fact, we don't even care. As far as we're concerned, our thrall is perfectly natural and we don't want it to change.”

“That … sounds very dangerous,” Danny noted. “Is it possible for people to manipulate what goes into your thrall, just to screw with you?”

Janesha blinked, genuinely impressed. Most celestials didn't even think to ask that question. Of course, some had, and a few of those had gotten the answer 'yes'. Instinctively, Janesha went to her own debilitated Uncle Blagden for an example of how badly thrall could grab a god by the balls, but changed her mind. Let's go with one you’ve probably heard of, if your constant referencing of the Almighty is anything to go by. “Have you ever heard of Uriel, the Archangel of Vengeance in Heaven?”

Danny looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard of him as an archangel, but I didn’t know that last part.”

“What other designation would you give the crown prince of Hell?”

“Whaaaaat?”

“Nevermind.” Too much information, fuckwit, she chastised herself. “The point is, he has a strong powerbase of vengeance, and he is very good at what he does—nailing tongues to rafters, skinning people alive…et cetera, et cetera.”

“Ewww,” Taylor made a repulsed face. “Gross.”

Janesha shrugged. “It is what it is, and we’re getting off point again. Uriel is no relation to me, but he is related to those NYPD homicide cops I told you about before. Two of them are the realm’s greatest wise-asses, but they’re smart enough to not attack anyone from the celestial realm frontally. They’ll come at us from the side. Uriel is their great uncle, but somehow, somewhere along the lines, he pissed them off.” Envisioning the rest of the story that was yet to come, Janesha’s body shuddered as she tried to hold in the laugh. “One in particular decided to print a book about guardian angels and what they would do for you, if you prayed to them for help.”

By now, tears were building in the corners of her eyes and her lips were pinched so tightly she could barely speak. It really was that damned funny.

“Oh dear,” Danny said, apparently seeing where this was going.

“So yeah, people started praying to Uriel, the Heavenly Archangel of Vengeance, to help them pick out their white goods.” Her chest started to cramp from holding in the laughter. “And he did!” Unable to hold it in anymore, Janesha threw her head back and roared with laughter. If Uriel ever found out she was spreading that story, he’d be paying her a visit, but damn, it was worth it.

“People prayed to him to help him pick out a washing machine, and he just did it?” Taylor’s brow creased in disbelief.

“If he was within five meters of the dipshits, yeah. It wasn’t until after he got out of range that he snapped out of it, and at first he was really confused by what had happened. And then it kept happening. After a while he figured it out, and at that point my cousin was lucky to get out of that alive. Belial sent in a demonic horde to purge the world of that belief. Or at least, I heard he threatened to, but my cousin – the one who’s actually in charge over there, straightened it all out by removing their desire to worship Uriel in that capacity.”

“I thought you said she didn’t interfere with the mortals.”

“They were already interfered with by her sons. If she didn’t fix the mess, Belial would’ve executed a purge of the believers, and in her mind they didn’t deserve that.”

“By purge, you mean … kill?”

Janesha stopped laughing long enough to shrug at Taylor’s naivety. “Welcome to the big leagues petal. I wasn’t kidding when I said my Uncle Tal kicks worlds across galaxies, and not all of them are uninhabited.” Looking at their horrified expressions, she suddenly felt the need to explain. “When you chop a tree out of your front yard, do you suddenly stop and cancel the landscaping contract because there’s an ants’ nest in one of the branches? Or do you feel sorry for those ants when they swarm you in defence of their home? Or do you swear, shake them off, curse them for even being there in the first place and keep going? It’s not my intention to upset you, but I told you how big Mystal is, and you want us to care about a few thousand people on one solitary world? A world that has billions of people to take the place of that handful, and will before the decade is out?”

“I don’t like being compared to an ant,” Danny grizzled, gaining a nod of agreement from Taylor.

“But you still see what I’m getting at?” Again, both nodded. “Then I’ll get back to how celestials have to be very careful about how mortals worship them. Now, keep in mind, this all happened long before I was born, but the Asgardians have built in what I think has to be the most ridiculous flaw a pantheon could ever instil in their worshippers. They have their mortals believing that without the golden apples of immortality, their pantheon will wither and die. How dumb is that?”

Taylor frowned, and Janesha could see in her surface thoughts that she was struggling to keep up. “But … they're still around, right? After thousands of years?”

Janesha chuckled. “Billions of eons, actually, petal. They've been known on Earth for a few thousand years, and then only because of my cousin’s generosity. Anyway, the Asgardians maintain their long lives with Idun's golden apples. She supplies them, they eat them once a year, and that’s what gets them to live through the next year. That, right there, is a monumental screwup, but try telling them that and all you'll get is a blank stare. It’s simply impossible for them to break away from their thrall long enough to see how stupid it is.” She shrugged. “And that’s the downside to power. Thrall.” Her expression sharpened. “Which is why we keep a close eye on any prophets, so that we know for certain that they're saying what we want them to say. If we don’t nip that made-up crap in the bud and people take it onboard, we suddenly find ourselves perfectly okay with it.”

“Hmm … okay.” Danny took his glasses off and cleaned them. “So, I’m assuming you don’t want anyone to know you’re a celest while you’re here then, correct?”

Janesha nodded. “Yeah, you know the saying. Great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“So, say someone was in thrall. How do you fix it?” Taylor asked.

This was the part Janesha didn’t really want to go into detail about, as it went hand in hand with destroying a powerbase as well. “You can’t do it yourself. That’s rule number one. But I heard my Uncle Avis was a very different god back before he met Aunt Clarise, and the whole realm had to come together while he and his young family hid out in Olympus. Even with everyone and their powerbases involved, it still took nearly a year for every mortal to have their thoughts realigned to the newer version of Uncle Avis: The one where he was a devoted family man.”

“What was he before?” Taylor asked, genuinely curious.

Janesha shrugged again. “I don’t have any personal experience. But … from what I was told … he was a bastard through and through, though he’d hand me my ass if he ever heard me calling him that.” She hoped they would take the good out of that conversation, and not realise the same could be said about a powerbase.

“With your propensity to kill mortals that annoy you, why go to the trouble of changing them all?”

She should’ve known Danny wouldn’t miss it. “Because the whole pantheon relies on those mortals. Not just one person. That’s why we’re all so defensive of our borders.”

“I can see a problem there,” Danny said slowly. “If someone planned it out carefully, they could be half a world away when they start the worship and jerk you around by remote control.” He turned a worried glance on Janesha. “And your little jaunt to Rio got as much attention as that whistle you let out over the Atlantic. Sightings in Princeton, Bermuda and half of Brazil. What if even one person decided to worship you? We've got idiots worshipping the Endbringers, for crying out loud.”

“Remember what I said about five meters. A worshipper needs to be kept within five meters for the powerbase and thrall to remain in effect. Attunement is what changes individual belief into a collective thing. Putting it into simple terms, when the presence of a celestial filters through all aspects of the mortal realm, instead of a drop of ink on paper, it becomes a drop of ink in water. But for that process to be done right, it takes a really long time. Centuries of centuries at least.”

“Okay, so bottom line: no telling anyone you're a celestial,” Danny noted. “We probably shouldn’t tell anyone you’re living here with us either. No matter how you cut it, your power is going to get a lot of attention.”

“There's a good chance that Halbeard knows I’m here, and he's already told his boss,” Janesha reminded him, and was rewarded with a wince. “Oh, come on. 'Halbeard' is a perfect nickname for him. No, I got a better one. 'Two-sticks'.” She chuckled at her own wit.

“I know I'm going to regret this,” Taylor ventured. “'Two-sticks'?”

Danny gave Janesha a forbidding scowl. “One covers the halberd in one hand, and the other right where you might imagine.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should add implied profanity to that wish list, and please don't call him that to his face.”

“Where I might imagine?” Taylor frowned in puzzlement. “What does that … oh. Oh.” She screwed up her face in disgust. “Ew.”

“Puerile teenage nicknames for well-known superheroes aside,” Danny said grimly. “The good thing about our world having parahumans, is you fit right in.” He shot her a pointed look. “Provided you tone it right the hell down.”

“Which reminds me,” Janesha said. “When would be a good time for me to get rid of those stupid ships and fix up your port?”

“Keeping in mind that you want to stay within the capabilities of regular superheroes?” Danny shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. Parahumans are very capable physically, so I guess it would be alright to clean it up over a day or two …”

Janesha screwed up her nose. “Really? That’s … what you consider fast?”

Danny nodded, his expression becoming stern. “It’s plenty fast enough, Janesha. And whatever you do, don’t even hint that you can bend the minds of people to your will. I mean to anyone. In fact, don't mind-bend anyone at all if you can help it. If people know you’ve done it, they’ll … misunderstand.”

Janesha felt as if she was talking in circles. “What part of bending makes you think anyone remembers anything I don’t want them to remember?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It kinda is,” Janesha mumbled, folding her arms.

“I mean, we know we can trust you,” Taylor said, her tone earnest with a heavy dose of placation. “But what if other people see what you’re doing, and you don’t notice it?”

Danny thumped himself firmly in the chest. “Like I did, when I knew … I flat out knew you’d messed with Armsmaster before you admitted it.”

Taylor looked at Janesha in shock. “You messed with Armsmaster?”

“He was being a pushy dick and wanted to steal the credit for our work. I just made him behave himself, that’s all.”

“It doesn’t matter what you did. What matters is I figured it out, and if I figured it out, others will too. You’re the one that wants to fly below the radar as far as being a celest is concerned.”

“But I’m a bender – first and foremost. It’s how I get most of my shit done.”

“You’re also a shape-shifter,” Taylor pointed out. “And nobody's scared of shifters like they are of mind-reading and mental control.”

“They should be,” Janesha said, snarkily. “After all, I can turn anything to dust with a touch.”

“That’s still more acceptable here than mind-bending. You may not like it, but thanks to the Simurgh, that’s the way it is.” She could see in Danny’s surface thoughts that he hoped that would be the last time he’d have to say it. Ironically, she knew she could arrange it just by ordering him to never bring it up again. Unfortunately, he’d earned her respect and gratitude. More to the point, he'd freely invited her into his home as a guest without expecting anything in return, so in her mind, he’d earned the right to choose.

“So when do you want me to start?”

“Tomorrow morning, maybe?” Danny offered. “Unless you have more pressing matters to attend to?”

“Could we shoot for the afternoon?” she asked, after a moment’s thought. “Once I get back from school.”

That got a reaction.

“What?” asked Taylor.

“School?” blurted Danny.

“Really?” That was Taylor again.

The two Heberts looked at each other, then at Janesha, then back at each other. It reminded her of Uncle Avis and Uncle Amaro, when they'd both turn to talk to the same person at the same time. She'd wondered at the time if they even knew just how terrifyingly intimidating that was. Of course they know. That's why they do it.

“I'm guessing she didn't discuss it with you, Taylor,” Danny said. “I know she didn't talk to me about it.” He eyed Janesha firmly across the table. “So why the sudden urge to visit our schools? I'm almost certain we're not teaching anything you'd find useful.”

“Never said they were,” she agreed, perhaps a little more darkly than she intended. “But I definitely want get to know certain people there. Someone deserves to have their asses kicked for what happened to Taylor, and shifting-wise just for you, Danny, I’m happy to supply the oversized boot to their backsides.”

Taylor froze up. “You … want to go to Winslow … on your own?” She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “I think that's a very, very bad idea.”

Danny seemed to catch her drift a moment later. “Oh, of course. There’s the Empire, and you’re not of their favourite skin tone. Very bad idea. Stupendously, horrifically bad idea for a person of colour to go there ...”

The bluff might have worked, had she not already been in full possession of what the ‘Empire’ consisted of. “What the hell makes you think I can't handle a bunch of mortal bigots by myself?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be fine,” Danny said brusquely. “It’s the school that’ll probably be a smoking crater by the time you were finished with it, if I'm any judge.”

“Probably be an improvement.” Realising exactly what she’d said, Taylor suddenly brightened. “Actually, that's a really good point. Dad, we should let her go.” When he turned to her in incredulity, she tried to look innocent and failed badly.

“No.” Danny's voice was flat. “Not. Happening.” He gave Janesha a look very much like one of her uncles disapproving of her part in some prank or other. “Not without someone along to keep an eye on you, anyway. I'd give it five minutes before you started using your powers, and ten before someone started worshipping you. Subtle, you’re not.”

“I can be subtle!” Janesha protested. “I'm a mind-bender! Subtle is what we do!”

Danny had a devastating line in raised eyebrows. The only one better she'd ever seen was Uncle Tal. “Really? Just today, you picked up a tank and juggled it in front of Armsmaster, let out a whistle that people heard in London, flew from Brockton Bay to Rio in the blink of an eye, and shoved our neighbour's house three feet sideways. Was that you being subtle? Because if that's the case, I'd hate to see you being overt.”

“That house thing was only because you wouldn't let me mind-bend your neighbour into accepting a smaller space,” she insisted. “That’s on you.”

“You know, I've never met this cousin of yours that runs the other Earth, but already I understand where she's coming from,” Danny rolled his eyes to the ceiling as he spoke. “If it's a choice between having celestials nudging our minds every which way to suit their idea of morality or going our own way and to hell with it, I'll pick free will, thanks. What faith in a higher power I ever had, I lost when my wife passed away. Nothing I've seen since has given me any reason to change my mind.”

“That's because there's never been any gods, or even celestials, on this Earth except the one who set it all up,” Janesha explained, trying to hold on to the last strands of her patience. It wasn't easy. “Well, there is at least one, but until I meet them, I won’t know what their game is.”

“And you seriously think I’m going to let you go anywhere near Winslow? A place renowned for chewing up and spitting out ordinary kids, not to mention that there's neo-Nazis who'd do their best to shank you just for your skin colour, and you think I’m going to believe that you won't be using your powers on all and sundry?” asked Danny sarcastically. “No dice.”

Janesha sucked in the right side of her lips between her teeth as she applied her Uncle Avis’ habit of mentally counting to ten to stay in control. The urge to shred him for the audacity of assuming she needed his permission to go anywhere, or that his belief in what she would and wouldn’t do once there should have had any kind of bearing on her decision was overwhelming. This is Danny. Danny is a friend. Danny is human. Danny means well. Danny saved your life. You can’t kill Danny for being an arrogant fuckwit. That last once she repeated three more times, to get her rising temper under control. Once it was there, she breathed out slowly and said, “What if Taylor came with me?”

“No.” Danny's voice was flat. “She's still recovering from the last time someone pulled shit on her.”

This time, Janesha let her sigh be audible. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a weaver in any capacity, but if Taylor was willing, I can alter the bad memories slightly so they don't hurt to think about anymore.”

Taylor blinked. “What?”

Janesha poked herself in the chest. “Mind. Bender. I can go into your head, find the memories of what happened to you and make it seem like it happened ten years ago instead of last week. Still there, you still know what happened, but it lets you get over it a lot faster.”

Danny opened his mouth as if to object, then closed it again. He frowned at her. “Just like that?”

Janesha was really not used to being questioned, and she went back to her earlier mantra to avoid an unpleasant outcome. “Yeah,” she said patiently. “Just like that. I could just as easily remove the memory altogether, but then everyone else would remember what happened that day except Taylor, and that makes for even more complications without a weaver on hand to smooth everything over.”

“Dad, can I? Please?”

“Are there any side effects?” asked Danny. “Will she lose other memories or something?”

Congratulations, Danny. Three times in as many minutes. And this is why we don’t give mortals our word. “Seriously. Not your version of Simurgh. The only thing that's gonna happen is what I say is gonna happen.” She gave them both an encouraging smile. “Just think of it as six months of therapy. Only without a huge bill at the end of it.”

“Taylor?” Danny looked hard at his daughter. “Do you really want to go through with this?”

Taylor nodded. “If it makes me feel even a little bit better, hell yes.”

“Okay, then.” Danny sighed. “I'm not feeling great about this, but if it'll help Taylor …”

“I can absolutely guarantee it,” Janesha assured him. She didn't bother asking if Taylor was ready: if she wasn't, it didn't matter. Permission achieved, she dived straight into Taylor's head.

<><>

Finding the requisite memory was remarkably easy. The conversation had brought up the incident in Taylor's mind, which gave Janesha a direct link back to the actual event. She walked through it, almost frame by frame, taking careful note of who showed up in Taylor's field of view. Certain people seemed to spring out at her, which meant Taylor had been paying more attention to them than the others. A girl as redheaded as Cousin Cora and her son, another girl as petite as Aunt Clarise (though without the golden irises and jet-black hair) and a third girl with skin as dark as Janesha herself.

“Okay, then,” she mused to herself. “Let's see who these people are.” Latching on to the redhead, she followed the memory link back to happier days. From there, she skip-jumped through the related memories, following a path of betrayal and spite that made her want to strangle a certain Emma Barnes. Or turn her into a constipated gerbil, whichever gave her more satisfaction at the time.

Next, was the girl labelled 'Madison Clements'. Madison had only showed up once Taylor entered Winslow, and she seemed to be more of a toady than an instigator. One of those “yeeeah,” girls she’d seen around the place. Still, Janesha made a note of the name and face and added it to the list she was creating.

Third was Sophia Hess … wait a minute. Janesha had heard that name before, but not with enough clarity to identify it. The girl was an outright bully, but Danny had never heard of her. That much she was certain of, because of his overprotectiveness toward Taylor now. If he knew Taylor’s nemesis by name, it would’ve been the most prominent thing in his surface thoughts, along with ways to get even. Which meant, the source of that name was Armsmaster.

Janesha needed to internalise again, for the fourth time that day regarding that hypocritical asshat, and to do that, she needed to be inside her own mind.

Withdrawing from Taylor, Janesha immediately turned her thoughts inward, allowing maybe a tenth of a second to pass in the physical realm. She skimmed over Armsmaster’s knowledge, until an hour later, she had what she was looking for. And it made her even madder. “Motherfucker!” she swore, freezing an image of Sophia Hess as Shadow Stalker. “You wanna pick on someone smaller and weaker than you, bitch? Someone I happen to now give a shit about? Oh, two can play that game, you little fucking peon!” Janesha stayed just long enough to absorb every facet of Shadow Stalker’s powers before retreating to her imagination. There, she created several imaginary versions of the girl known as Sophia Hess and ended each and every one of them. Twenty minutes of literally tearing the Hess girl to pieces had her calm enough to return to the outer edge of her consciousness and leap back across to Taylor. Another tenth of a second passed in the meantime.

She went back to the original memory, dulling down not the fear itself, but the memory of the fear, until she knew Taylor was almost indifferent to the entrapment. Yes, the locker incident was a bitch act. Yes, happened. Yes, she was hospitalised afterwards. Yes, she now had powers of her own as a result. Moving on.

As she played it through one last time to make sure everything was just as she wanted it, Janesha noticed something strange. There was not one, but two blocks around several seconds of Taylor's memory, acquired in relatively quick succession. Okay, this is fucking weird. The celest in charge erased her memories while she was inside the locker? Why the fuck would he do that?

Going over the blocked memories, it was almost too easy to peel them back, which meant whoever instigated them was at the very least a lower-generation bender than she was. It didn't take her more than half a second to peek under the first block.

The memory wasn’t Taylor’s. It was a modified memory, more like a hallucination of outer space, with weird slug-like creatures twisting and turning around each other. Are they mating? Ew. Just as abruptly, the hallucination had ended with no real explanation of why it had been there and what the bender had wanted with her mind. The second block covered more of the same, only it seemed the dance of the slugs seemed more intense, this time. Was that what the celestials in charge of this place looked like? Giant space slugs? With shifting blood, anything was possible shape wise. But why implant the memory, only to hide it again? That was the part that made no sense to her.

On a hunch, she replayed the memory between the two blocks, and found her mortal friend had started showing the first indications that she could communicate with bugs. Or rather, she'd started getting signals from them at this point. Of course, she didn't know what they were, and combined with the trauma from being locked in the locker, she'd worked herself into a frenzy over it. Huh. I wonder if the first block's related to her getting a link to whatever celestial construct gives her those powers? She wasn't sure what the second block was about; maybe a patch of some type?

In any case, Janesha had found out quite enough for the moment. She resealed the implanted memories behind their blocks, ran the altered memories through one last time, then withdrew to the physical realm with the sense of a task well done. Of course, now I have to convince Taylor that I've actually done something …

<><>

“So when do you want to start?” asked Taylor, a little apprehensively. “Do you need me to lie down on the sofa or something?”

Janesha didn’t have the heart to tell her it was already done. And then she thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone. “No, though you need to sit still with your eyes shut,” —Janesha leaned forward and placed her hand on Taylor's forehead— “And count backwards from ten for me.”

Obediently, Taylor shut her eyes and began counting.

Janesha waited until 'one', then used her shifting to put a full stimulation wave through Taylor's body. Many mortals called it ‘the Touch of the Divine’ and they weren’t wrong. A single pass brought every cell in the body to its optimum capacity. Shifters did it to themselves all the time, but only those who were either touch or ranged were able to offer it to another.

Taylor's eyes flew wide open as Janesha took her hand away. “Oh, wow!” she gasped. “I feel amazing. Like … I just had the long hot shower to end all hot showers.”

Janesha smiled, knowingly. “How do you feel, in your head?”

Taylor blinked; in her surface thoughts, Janesha watched her prod cautiously at the subdued memory of the locker. “ … huh,” she said. “It's like you said. I know it happened, but it's not all over my thoughts like it was before. I can ignore it. I can even forget it if I want to.”

“That's the general idea,” Janesha told her. “But it’s up to you to keep it that way.”

“Huh?”

“My changes only involved your past. If you convince yourself to go back to remembering it with the fear you had before, I won’t be able to stop you. Well, I could, but I won’t.”

Taylor pulled a face. “As if I’d want to go back to remembering that stuff.”

Janesha sat back in her chair with her arms stretched in front of her. “So, how do you feel about being my native guide in the wilds of Winslow?” Now that I know exactly who I'm aiming for.

Taylor looked thoughtful, then her eyes narrowed. “Am I still as tough and strong as you said I was?”

It didn't take mind-bending to figure out that Taylor seriously wanted to punch out Sophia Hess. To answer her, Janesha picked up the salt shaker and performed a trivial modification on its material and crystalline structure. “Squeeze this as hard as you can,” she ordered Taylor, with a smile to take the edge off the command.

With a dubious look on her face, Taylor took the altered shaker and squeezed it with one hand. Predictably, it shattered, then the larger pieces crunched to dust as her hand closed farther. “Okay,” she said as she opened her hand to view the remains. “What did I just break?”

“Diamond,” Janesha informed her with just a hint of smugness. “And not any of that artificial crap with flaws in it, either. I do good work.”

The look on Taylor's face was priceless. Danny's wasn't far behind. He picked up one of the fragments left behind and crushed it between finger and thumb. “Diamond,” he repeated with a hitch of his eyebrow, dusting his fingertips together. “Should I be impressed or worried that we can crush diamonds with our bare hands?”

Janesha shrugged. “That's up to you. But to answer your question, yes, you are as strong as I said you’d be. But before you consider throwing a punch at a certain trio’s faces, just remember I’m not established in the field of Life. That means, they stay very dead if you punch their heads off their shoulders.”

“Oh.” Taylor slumped a little. “Could you make me a bit less strong, then? So I can punch people without killing them?”

“How about we get through the day without punching anyone?” Danny suggested. “Just as an idea. The last thing I want is Winslow suing me for the money they gave us, on the grounds that you're bullying people.”

Taylor looked outraged. “But Dad, they're bullying me!”

“I know, honey. I know.” He raised his hands defensively. “But getting any sort of concession out of those people is like pulling teeth. I swear, if they'd had half a chance, they would've accused you of shutting yourself in that locker.”

“It's all right, Danny.” Janesha gave him a reassuring nod. “If anyone tries anything stupid, they'll break their hand on her jaw. In the meantime, I’m just going to have a quiet word with the people who think it's a fun idea to screw with her.” For a given definition of 'quiet word', of course.

Danny regarded her thoughtfully. “I find myself strangely all right with that idea. Have you fiddled with my mind when I wasn't looking?”

Janesha snarled violently and shot him a lethal look while holding up one finger. “Accuse me of that one more fucking time, after I gave you my word I wouldn’t,” she warned, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“Okay … okay…” Danny raised his hands and patted at the air placatingly. “Calm down, Janesha. I didn’t mean anything by it …”

Much of Janesha’s rage subsided with his acquiescence, though her eyes were still slitted in his direction. “Don’t ever do that again, Danny Hebert of Earth Bet, or friend of the Mystallians or not, it won’t end well for you.”

Danny cleared his throat. “Right. Okay. Good to know. Taylor and I are off-limits without permission, and everyone else only gets bent if nothing else works.”

“I will try other avenues first,” Janesha quantified. Her exact agreement was ‘other things’ including stuff she knew wouldn’t work. She had no intention of trying everything else first. Fuck that. With the resources she had access to, trying 'everything' would probably take a few centuries, and she didn't intend to be here for that long.

For all that he obviously respected and believed her, it took Danny's natural cynicism a few moments to accept her words at face value. “Okay,” he said. “Keep Taylor safe, please?”

“Of course,” she assured him. “Anyone stupid enough to try anything on her will think they've been jumped by the brute squad themselves.”

Whatever reaction she'd been expecting—puzzlement, mainly—the chuckle from Danny wasn't it. “I would never have picked you for a Princess Bride fan,” he observed.

“A what now?” she asked.

“The brute squad – from the Princess Bride movie.” An image of the lumbering mortal from the movie flashed across Danny’s surface thoughts, causing Janesha to cover her eyes and emit a deep groan. “Seriously? You’re comparing the most dangerous, Highborn Hellion fighting force, with a movie about human princesses?”

“Not just any movie about princesses,” Danny said, the grin on his face widening. He looked at Taylor. “Honey, it looks like she's never seen The Princess Bride.”

Taylor nodded. Her expression was serious, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “It does look like that. Should we put it on?”

“Oh, definitely.”

Janesha looked from one to the other. What have I got myself into?

<><>

Two Hours Later

“So,” asked Taylor as the credits began to roll. “Did you enjoy the movie?”

Janesha stifled a fit of giggles. “Inconceivable!”

“I do not think that word means what you think it means,” Taylor intoned solemnly, which of course set Janesha off again.

“That was an insane movie,” she said when she could speak again. “I am not left handed either.” Remembering the cordial fighting scene, Janesha laughed and slapped the side of the chair. “I could so see my great-grandmother doing that to someone who didn’t know who she was, right before she handed him his ass.” She laughed again, envisioning the scene with the Mystallian goddess of War. “And by the realms, there's no way Uncle Chance could’ve seen that movie. He’d be driving us all nuts with the sheer number of one liners he could pull from it.”

As Danny turned off the TV, Taylor rose from the lounge and waved Janesha to follow her. They went up the stairs and along the corridor. “You talk about your Uncle Chance a lot. He's really your god of Luck?” Taylor pushed her bedroom door open and sat on her bed.

Janesha followed her in. “Of course. He was lucky even before he became the god of Luck, and he is by far the coolest uncle ever.” Grabbing the computer chair, Janesha spun it around so she could sit on it with her arms crossed over the back. “I mean, if you took every cool uncle there ever was and rolled the best bits of them into one person, that's my Uncle Chance. If you're down, he always knows exactly what to say to make you feel better. If you're up to some prank or another, he'll probably show up at just the right time to offer helpful advice on how to make it even more awesome.”

“That does sound cool,” Taylor agreed. She sat back on her hands, looking pensive. “Um, I've got a question.”

Janesha glanced into her head and nodded to herself. I wondered when this was going to come up. “Go ahead.”

“You said pantheons don't share realms,” Taylor began slowly. “And you also said that Mystal's one of the bigger realms out there. How come we've heard of all these other gods, these other pantheons, but never Mystal until today?”

Janesha chuckled. The answer was incredibly easy. She spun around on the chair, making sure her cape flared outward instead of tangling with the chair wheels as it wanted to. “Remember how I said my cousin runs Earlafaol? She's totally unique, and unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t have to worry about having her borders being breached. So, as a gesture of goodwill, she reached out to all the other pantheons and invited them to set up pockets of worshippers on the world where she and her family lived on.”

“And they believed her?”

“My cousin is the Weaver. They’ll believe whatever she wants them to.”

“So, she can control the gods?”

“It’s not a well-known thing outside of Mystal, but yeah, if she wants to, she can. It’s one of the reasons why she lives far from them in the Unknown Realms.”

Taylor frowned. “Hang on. This is the same cousin who allows mortals do whatever they want without interference, isn’t she?”

Janesha nodded. “Yeah.”

“And she doesn’t do it to gods either, for the same reason?”

Janesha nodded again. “Now you’re getting it. She’s a real sweetheart and everyone loves her. Those who don’t, instinctively stay away.”

“Then why haven’t I heard of Mystal?”

“Because … I think you have a term for it. Hovercraft parent?”

“Helicopter mom,” Taylor corrected.

Janesha bobbed her head. “Right, well, imagine the most heavily-laden nuclear-armed helicopter gunship dad, capable of destroying whole galaxies if one single stupid little mortal so much as gives his little princess a dirty look.”

A muscle under Taylor’s eye twitched and she visibly winced. “That bad?”

“And worse. Uncle Avis is utterly psycho when it comes to her, and trust me, if she let either him or the rest of the pantheon in, Mystal would never leave your world and he’d have a wall of celestial bodyguards over fifty deep in every direction around her at all times. The world’s religions would never recover from the overwhelming presence of Mystal.”

“Why would he let her go, if he’s that psycho about her safety?”

Janesha smirked. “If you ask her, they sat down for a long heart to heart and she talked him into agreeing with her point of view. The rest of us have another theory we’re not stupid enough to voice.”

“She weaved him?”

Janesha winked and grinned, but said no more.

Taylor blinked. “Ah.” She glanced around the bedroom. “Well, uh, I need to get ready for bed soon. What are you going to be doing while I'm asleep?”

“Sleeping, duh. Celestials need their sleep as well.” Janesha chuckled at the stunned look on Taylor's face. “Hey, some things are universal.”

“If you say so.” Taylor's tone indicated that she was fully aware some things were less universal than Janesha was trying to make out. “So where are you going to sleep? My bed's not exactly big enough for two people. Or are you going to set up down in the basement, next to Cloudstrike?”

Janesha considered that. “Actually, that's not a bad idea, but I've got a better one. Back in a moment.” She hurried downstairs, resisting the urge to realm-step into the basement to save time.

“Forgot something?” Danny asked as she hustled through the kitchen.

“Nah, just remembered I need to make my bed,” she replied.

“But …” He trailed off, apparently having decided that waiting to see what she was up to was better than asking questions. Which was all to the good, because she wasn't about to hang around at the top of the stairs, answering them.

Cloudstrike nickered happily to see her, and Janesha spent a few moments with her arms around the neck of the mystallion, enjoying the closeness. “We'll go flying again soon, girl,” she assured her closest friend. While she was there, she replenished the hay—Cloudstrike had been busy there—and the water in the trough.

Then she grabbed the workbench and crunched its mass into that of pure tungsten, shrinking its size into a ball roughly the size of a soccer ball. She then tucked it under her arm and headed back up the stairs.

“Do I want to know what that's for?” asked Danny as she came through the kitchen again.

“I told you,” she said patiently. “I need to make my bed.”

“But …” he said again, and then something clicked in his head. “Oh. You need to make your bed.”

She rolled her eyes. Normally he was a lot sharper than that. “That's what I've been telling you.” Trotting upstairs, she strolled down the corridor and entered Taylor's room again. In her absence, Taylor had changed into her pyjamas.

Taylor eyed the dull-grey ball she was carrying. “What's that?”

Answering her in full would've taken far too much time, so Janesha decided to show her instead. Heading over to the bed, she pushed the tungsten ball into the baseboard and merged the two together. Then, with her hand firmly on the thicker baseboard, she grew the bed from a single, narrow bed into a double bunk setup with mattress proportions half the size again of the original.

“Ta-dah,” Janesha announced with a flourish. “Bunk beds. Problem solved. Which would you prefer, top or bottom?”

“Uh … top?” ventured Taylor. “I've never slept in a bunk bed before.” At Janesha's nod, she climbed the short ladder at the end of the bed, and settled down on to the mattress. “Oh … wow,” she breathed, stretching out on the bed. “This has got to be the most comfortable mattress I've ever slept on.”

Janesha buffed her nails complacently, then inspected them. They were, of course, perfect. “Shape. Shifter,” she reminded Taylor. “It doesn’t matter where I am, I always make sure I sleep in celestial comfort.” With barely a thought, she shifted her Mystallian garb into appropriate sleepwear, then stretched her arm across the room to close the door and turn out the light. Climbing into the lower bunk, she pulled the covers over herself. “Night, Taylor,” she said into the darkness.

“Night, Janesha.” Taylor's reply was already drowsy. Those mattresses were very comfortable.

Janesha grinned to herself and rolled over. Tomorrow was another day, and it promised to be a lot of fun.

Part 6