Dominion Chapter 24 – The End (Patreon)

A/N: This is the unedited draft ending. I probably won't post the actual till tomorrow, or maybe Sunday because I'm not quite confident in it yet. But you guys get a first peek. Might be worth it to wait until it's actually edited if you want it to have the most punch and not sound stilted. 

Dominion is over. I... finished a thing. 

...Dang. 

Feels good. 

Chapter Twenty Four – The End

Tears were falling down Dad’s eyes. I didn’t see why. Was he surprised? I’d told him what I planned. I’d asked him to forgive me. 

Watching his daughter kill people probably hadn’t been fun for him, but then, getting sutured into the form of the most infamous of the nine probably wasn’t great either. I imagined he wouldn’t have the best life going forward if he chose to leave my Dominion anyway. 

Him alone, I would give the choice. 

Bonesaw. Cute little murderous crockpot of insanity. I felt as if once I would’ve killed her immediately in this situation. Not now. Not anymore. She was far too useful. Her ability to synthesize immunity to my power and give or take it at will made her my most valuable Thrall. 

Behind Penny of course. 

I hugged her, cackling a little at her blank expression, before stabbing her in the thigh with one of Bonesaw’s vials. 

She awakened slowly, blinking under her own control. She wobbled. Wavered. Then toppled to the floor. I laughed at her, amused by the bleak situation. She hadn’t stood under her own power in months. Good to know for the future. 

She held up her hands and stared at them, trembling. 

“You, of all my thralls, deserve the chance to go free if you want Penny,” I told her. She jerked her eyes up to me. “I gave you the chance once before, and you turned it down. Now though, you’ve killed three of the nine. You could live out the rest of your days in luxury if you want to.” 

“Y-Yughh,” she said before firming her determination. Her mouth moved, pulling out words as she remembered the feeling of controlling herself. “You… cared then. L-less now. But you still do, deep down. I… would prefer to stay with you Dominion. W-we.. we stopped the fucking nine.” 

I smiled, feeling little beads at the corners of my own eyes. I had a friend. “We did, didn’t we?” 

“Mghhrl… Wuh?” Dad’s paralyzed body couldn’t speak and I didn’t quite know what Bonesaw had done to him yet. But we would figure that out. In the meanwhile his immunity was an expansion of whatever Sophia and Emma had. I couldn’t repair that easily, so he would just have to deal. 

“Dad, this is Penny. She’s my best Thrall. She killed Shatterbird for me, and now she’s killed Burnscar and Jack,” I said. 

Penny laughed a little. Then louder. She laughed through her tears, and I joined her, collapsing to the floor of my destroyed house in hysterics. 

I’d won. The nine were dead and I… I was free. Barring Dragon killing me, or Hat Lady finding some new way to shape me, the nine were mine. 

I had gained access to a new thrall other than Bonesaw when taking control of her. The amalgamation of the lizard and the darkness guy. Since asking Bonesaw anything was absolutely out of the question, he was the best source of information I had, other than maybe Mannequin. Without Jack’s unusual ability to understand Alan though, I was unable to communicate with him. 

I didn’t actually have control of the man. I controlled Bonesaw which gave me an innate understanding of her powers, which meant I could use her to control the lizard. God I needed a name for him. 

“Penny, do me a favor and point your finger at his head?” I asked gently. “Mannequin? Could you hold him still? His power is potent and it would be a real kick in the face to beat Jack and lose to Bonesaw’s creation. 

The two complied. Mannequin stood up with his dented body and unleashed an undamaged chain limb from his arm before wrapping it around Bonesaw’s pet. Penny also stood, still wobbling but steadier now, and held her murder finger to his head, being careful not to touch him. 

“Hello there. I don’t know your names or cape names so for the duration of this little conversation, your name is Party Favor. Party Favor, you’ve got two options going forward. You can help me by answering my questions after I remove Bonesaw’s controls on you, and I’ll probably let you go after that, to live whatever life you can. You’ll never pass for a normal person again… but at least half of you seems to have had that problem for as long as you can remember anyway. Or, you can choose not help me, and I can just keep you. Actually, I suppose you have three options. The third is that you can make an attempt to use your powers the second I release you, and then you die. I have no way to confirm if you’re clear on these options but I’m going to hope you are, and release you from Bonesaw’s control momentarily.” 

Bonesaw had installed control mechanisms of some sort within his brain, and she operated them with triggers inside the nerves of her arm. She had four or five of these throughout her body that she could use to control multiple parahumans at once should she wish to, and they were adaptable to new creations when the old ones inevitably perished. I wondered if…

I gulped. My eyes widened as I discovered that the controls in her lower right leg were attached to me. She could’ve puppeted me just like I was doing to her. Any time she wanted. Had they anticipated my plan to capture her first, I would have failed no matter how well I had done above. Had anything gone wrong with the Mercenaries, I would’ve failed. I’d threaded the needle even more tightly than I’d thought.

I’d gotten… just… so fucking lucky. 

Bonesaw was mine now, though. I looked at her, feeling for her emotions. They were muted. I couldn’t feel them within the throng of others. The mercenaries. Miss Militia in particular was feeling incredibly pissed off and afraid. Bonesaw was… surprisingly ambivalent. I immediately became suspicious. Bonesaw should at least feel something right now, right? But all I could really feel was a sort of tense anticipation. 

Excitement? 

… Excitement. A trap. 

She wasn’t afraid of dying, nor was she afraid of Jack dying. The first didn’t surprise me but the second did. No. No, it was easy to understand why. With her knowledge, she could bring Jack back. It wouldn’t even be hard. Heck, I could do it.

Even now I could see seven ways for her to use the bodies around the room. Jack didn’t have to stay dead. Hell, her Dad was almost a perfect copy of him now. It wouldn’t be hard to make him–!

I cut off that line of thought, and reconsidered just making a bunch of immunity and antidote vials before killing the biotinker. 

Bonesaw could influence me through my own control. She must’ve had backups and contingencies within her own body, allowing her thoughts to influence mine. Because why wouldn’t she make something like that? 

Using her knowledge of her own power, I found the source of the ability and shut it down quickly. In her mind, there was a strange pocket of neurons with prepackaged patterns of chemical releases. Thoughts. Basically thoughts that my brain would automatically mimic upon encountering the packets. The more I used Bonesaw, the more I would begin to think like her until we were effectively the same. Until releasing her would’ve been a forgone conclusion. 

If I hadn’t noticed it. Coincidence? 

No. The hat lady. She’d made all the ducks fall in a row. She’d said I needed to experience victory right? Well, I’d won here. 

Bonesaw had apparently never considered that if I could use her power, I could understand the traps she’d laid though. Still a twelve year old. I flicked off the packet of thoughts, shutting down their influence. 

That finally got to her, because she suddenly flooded my Dominion with frustration and annoyance. I could almost feel the girl stomping her foot and shouting “Fiddlesticks!” I wasn’t as nice with her as Jack was. He’d spoiled her rotten. I wouldn’t be so kind.

“Bonesaw. You’ve been a bad girl,” I said aloud. 

The girl froze in shock, as if I’d slapped her in the face. Emotionally at any rate. Her body was completely under my control, but her emotions plummeted. Then, rage began to burn, melding with Miss Militia’s. 

Good. She wanted to be mad at me? Fine. I was just as mad at her for betraying me. 

Sister indeed.

“There we go,” I said, as I found the nerves within her arm to that could allow Party Favor to move. Oh! I could suppress his powers without suppressing his mobility! No wonder Jack had made it so long. Bonesaw’s powers were incredible. 

“Oh-god. Oh god. I’m… We… I c-can move…” the man shouted as soon as he could move. Unlike Penny, he didn’t seem to have any trouble. He’d only been controlled for a day. “I won’t try anything!” 

“Good,” I said calmly. “Now, I only have a few questions for you. First, did the nine have any other contingency plans that you know of?” 

“N-N… w-wait yeah. Your mind. Bonesaw said she could get you i-if you took control of her. That she w-wouldn’t be controlled for long and that it might b-be fun.” He was shivering as if he’d been in a deep freezer. Fear, or a lingering effect of Bonesaw’s method of control? 

Probably fear. 

“Already taken care of. Others?” 

“N-Not that I know of,” he said. His voice sounded strange, a little lispy. Probably because he’d been sewn together. His right and left sides seemed to be acting independently, his right side shivering frantically while the other seemed dead and silent. Only one side of his lips opened as he spoke, the other side remaining still. “O-Our body… the r-rest of us. It’s back at Somer’s rock. Can… can you fix me?” 

His left side twitched, then groaned. “Oh god, oh god, oh god. I feel… wrong.”

There wasn’t much lizard left to him. His body appeared to be entirely that of the darkness generator, but his skull had been sliced open and sewn back together almost seamlessly. When Bonesaw had done whever she had done, it seemed that it had mixed both of their powers, so parts of the man’s skin were blotchy and orange, looking like scales, while the other half remained normal. It was too uniform over his arms to be something Bonesaw had done, so I assumed this had occurred after she’d mixed their powers. 

Mixed their brains. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” I lied. Bonesaw’s power and point of view were assuring me that what she’d made couldn’t be unmade. But then, she didn’t have the only biological power out there. Who knew? “For now, can you tell me what they did with Crawler?” 

“I… have a sister. Please… I need to know if she–!” Shouted one side of his face, but it came out slurred as the other tried to answer with, “Jack and Bonesaw did something to him. D-don’t know where. He was howling… crying?” 

Hmm. Probably still alive then. I wasn’t surprised. Even the Siberian probably couldn’t kill Crawler. Defeat him yes, but I was pretty sure Crawler could survive almost anything short of obliteration. Siberian only had so many claws. 

“Thank you, Party Favor. Wonderful chatting with you,” I said before letting one of Bonesaw’s spiders inject him with the antidote to Bonesaw’s immunity. 

“N-no wait! Don’t call me that. The least you can do is use my name! It’s Nwgrerr..!” I cocked an eyebrow at his confused expression as he lost control. I didn’t think that last word was caused by me though. Poor guy. Guys. 

“I’m going to try to fix you. I promise. Till then, welcome to my Dominion, Party Favor. I hope to meet both of you separated someday,” I said with a smile. “As for your sister… well. Do you really want her near me?” 

Despair and sorrow. Muted, but strong enough that I could pick it out over Bonesaw and Miss Militia. 

So I didn’t know where Crawler was. I could go out looking for him later though. For now, I had to take some more stock. The basement held Sophia and whatever Bonesaw had done to her. She couldn’t move and Bonesaw didn’t have any controls for her. Jack had said something about tying me together with my bully forever though, so I suspected she’d never move again without help. 

I walked down the stairs slowly. 

I clicked on the light and almost lost my stomach. 

The nine had been soft balling me. I’d known that intellectually. I’d felt it. They’d kept their most gruesome things away so as to sway me. Bonesaw had not been kind here. 

The basement wasn’t a big room. Veins trailed visibly up and down the walls. Little red tubes filled with blood pulsed from a visibly beating heart. Sophia’s skull was visible, her eyes darting around as best they could without skin to hold them in place. Intestines seemed to spring out of her stomach, draped delicately around the room’s rafters. Her skin was opened and splayed out, stretched across the wall. Through her stomach, pinning her to the far wall was a long stake, probably driven into the wall by Siberian. It and smaller pins like it served to keep her pinned there, displaying her veins. 

For all that she should be, I didn’t think she was in pain. I also didn’t think there was anything wrong with her. All of her organs were there, sealed off in little terrariums. They were all wiggling. Doing things. Sustaining life in their normal manner. Yet… not. 

“Grotesque. Riley’s genius knows few bounds though. It is why I made sure to keep her. And the Siberian,” came the Hat Lady’s voice. 

I turned to her. She’d said I needed to know success. But did I really? I felt like I’d won. Like I’d truly accomplished something. But with her… guiding my steps, could I ever really feel like I’d earned anything? 

“Siberian disappearing at the end. That was you?” I asked. 

“In a way. A man in town owed us a favor. He used a pawn of his own to throw a bomb at just the right place. Siberian is contained now… until we decide to free her for the end. Her power might be the one we need. Or Riley’s. Or any number of powers really,” she said softly. 

“Mine?” I asked. 

She laughed lightly. “Possibly, though I doubt it. You are… different. A different sort of hope. But, when one falls off a cliff, they’ll grab for even the flimsiest vine. We are falling, Taylor. The world is falling. And every parahuman left alive is a possible vine.” 

“Right. The end of the world. You mentioned that. Some arbitrary ending that’s coming. Something you were shaping me for?” I asked. 

She smiled, and I knew she would ignore the question. 

“Tell me, Taylor. What would you do if you could do anything? Anything, except the one thing that mattered most?” she asked. “If you could solve any problem, but couldn’t see a way to fix the biggest one?” 

I thought about her question, trying to fit it into any sort of rationale. “Find someone who could?” 

“Exactly!” She exclaimed, then more quietly, said, “Exactly.” 

I stood under the light of the small basement lamp, under the gaze of my tortured former bully as I listened to the phantom that had haunted my steps ever since I’d become a parahuman. 

“Almost twenty years ago, two Entities came to our world. Our reality. One of them, we called her Eden, made a mistake. By chance or luck, she left me with a power so great it could destroy even her. But in her last moments, she crippled me. She died, but I could no longer see a way to stop her counterpart. My power could no longer find that one, necessary path to keep humanity alive. And so, we let parahumans roam, letting the world flood with them. Hoping and praying the right one might come along. The right one. There’s more to it than that, but as I have said before. The world will die. Everyone in it will die. Fifteen years. No more. After that, there is no one.”

I tried to wrap my mind around that idea. “She… crippled you?” 

“Yes. I could no longer see her counterpart. Nor her, but it was already too late for her. I remembered enough that we managed to end her during her weakest moment. Him though? I can see no way to stop him. Two years. It used to be two years if we were lucky. Something that happened here, today, made it longer though. We have bought almost a decade. Fifteen years now, until he kills us all.” 

“He… who?” I asked. 

“Scion of course,” she replied. “Had you not already guessed?” 

I blinked. Scion. Scion? The golden idiot? She’d called them entities. What…? 

“Scion is gone. Like, mentally. Why would he…?” I asked, trying to reconcile the golden man with a genocide. It hadn’t been so very long ago that I’d been shouting curses at him for not saving me. 

“He… you’re not far wrong with that assessment. He is gone. He is in mourning, or his version of it. By killing his counterpart, I ruined his plans here, and he does not know how to move forward. By luck, or happenstance, he rescues people, because it is something to do. Because it is something to distract him from his loss. He will die here, someday, unable to escape. We know this. But in a fit of rage, he will take humanity with him long before his end. When his grief turns to anger. And that, Dominion, is where you come in,” she said softly. 

I frowned. “So… Everything you’ve done to me. It’s been shaping me to fight him?” 

She chuckled. “I can see why you might think that. But no. Everyone will have to fight him or die to him. You would do that regardless, should you live long enough. No. My purpose for you has always been a side-path. A hope. A… knowledge of my own inadequacy, perhaps. Dominion, I am not a special person. I am not wise. Not smart. The world I’m from didn’t even have computers. Some time ago, I began to question… whether my own use of the paths was the wisest choice. Whether I was asking the right questions. Or… whether my friend was steering me as well as she should. And so I asked the path.” 

Her voice was wavering. Cracking. Any doubt I had in her conviction at least, was washing away. The end of the world? Really?

“If a path is impossible, or involves Scion… and a few other beings like the Endbringers, I cannot see it. The first entity’s counterstroke crippled me. But to my shock, this path had an answer. Ninety or so steps. Hardly any effort at all, by my reckoning. Leave a few bread crumbs. Put a note in a pocket. Schedule a message to send well in advance… just a few steps, and even for a little while, I might be able to breathe. I might be able to let someone better try their hand.” 

I tensed. This was it. This was why she’d been using me for so long. I bit my lip, both eager and infuriated at her. “What was it then!?” 

“Path: Find or make the person best suited to using my own powers for the betterment and survival of all mankind,” she scoffed bitterly. She looked up to me then, straight into my eyes. 

“But… but you just said that your power doesn’t take him into account. How could that?” 

“I don’t know!” she said. “The path leads here. Leads to you. 

“I’ve done terrible things to you, Taylor. I would apologize but it would never be enough. But then, I’ve done many thousands of terrible things. I don’t even know how to live without the path anymore. So… just once I wanted… to let... to let someone else have the burden. The responsibility. You’re the right person now. You’re the person who will ask the path the question that can best help us all. Just… just one last step.”

There were tears in her eyes. She pulled out the last vial she’d stolen from Bonesaw. A blue one. 

I met her eyes as she raised the vial. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. But it had to be done. The path demanded this. So… I lay the world’s hopes on you. Ask well. Path complete.” 

And she stabbed herself in the leg, injecting herself with the antidote. Giving me control of herself. Giving me control of her power. 

“Were you so guilty as all that?” I asked stepping towards her. 

I reached out with her power and found the routes to the futures she’d laid out for me, only a few short hours ago. I found more. I found everything. Paths to riches. Fame. Glory. Infamy. Control. I could own this world. For a while. For a short time, before everything seemed to cease. 

Path to returning to high school, surprisingly easy. 

Path to becoming one of the best heroes in the world? Seven thousand steps. Bigger. 

Path to…. Love? It was there. It was real. There were thousands and thousands of ways to reach that simplest and yet most complex of desires. 

And yet she’d told me they wouldn’t last. I couldn’t see what she spoke of, but I could feel it in the effects of the longer paths. Those with goals reaching so far that they couldn’t be accomplished before the end. 

Before an end. Never defined. Fog. Fog and mist. Lost. People no longer available to be a part of the path. Places no longer there to inspire or cause despair. Fifteen years. And I was the perfect person to ask the question best suited to protecting humanity.

But… no. 

That hadn’t been the path. The path was to find the person best suited to using her powers for mankind’s betterment. 

“Path: Know all the paths that Crazy Hat Lady has ever run.” 

Step 1: Make Crazy hat lady’s mouth make a Puh sound. Then an “ah.” Then a “th”. 

“Stop. Path, knowing Crazy Hat Lady’s fucking name.” 

“Fortuna,” she said in three steps. Pretty. I wanted to punch her in the face. 

I returned and listened as she spoke, listing out a multitude of paths she’d been running ever since she’d become a parahuman. Flipping between. Keeping active and using to accomplish her goals. Noble goals even. Corrupted.

The early ones were… unwieldy. Path to doing this while not doing that, while not killing these, while not ruining those, while avoiding that, while… 

They had evolved naturally. After mistakes. After the path had let her accomplish her goal in ways she found abhorrent. Over and over again. She’d had to specify. Had to tweak her wording. And the steps multiplied.

Sooner or later she’d grown callous. Grown to stop putting in that extra effort. The paths became shorter again. Shorter. With more collateral. She’d been directed at one point or another by someone else. Doctor suggested this path, and she’d taken it. They’d grown shorter. And people died, and their lives were ruined, and despair began to follow in her wake. 

She’d made Lung. Not even intentionally. As an afterthought, her power caused his. Everything he was centered on her. What would he think, knowing she was now under my power just like him?

Ruin followed in her wake. 

And I saw it. All the futures I could have. All the wonderful things her precognition could earn me. And yet all of sprang from Eden. Crippled? No. Sabotaged. And she’d never seen. With every use, with every path, the ones she was given couldn’t be trusted. She won. Every time. And the world suffered for it. 

Using her powers for the betterment of mankind was impossible. 

I looked her in her blank eyes. 

“The betterment of humanity. The responsibility. You… you were right, to do this. To put this power in someone else’s hands. You were right. Because it’s all you. It’s always been on you. Don’t you see? She didn’t cripple your power. She twisted it! It’s been making the worst choices for humanity all along! The world over there is hatred and anger and despair and gloom. You keep people like Jack alive because of your path! And you never even stopped to think… that it all might’ve stemmed from you? The end of each path has made the world better but every step along the way has made it worse! You! YOU. What could we have done without you? What might humanity have accomplished in the face of the Endbringers without your path to misery destroying us? The power was hers, and she touched it! From that moment forward it has been bent against us.” 

I raised the tinker tech pistol I’d neglected to use during the fight with the nine. 

She stared at me, blankly. There was no spike of horror. No despair. I think she already knew. I think she’d known for a long time. She just… wasn’t brave enough. 

“Fortuna… I hate you. For myself. For the things you did to me. For what you made me become because of your path. But, on the whole. I don’t think anyone could’ve done better,” I said. 

I finally felt an emotion from her. Relief. Blessed, overwhelming relief. 

“Well done, Fortuna. It’s time to rest,” I said. 

I fired twice. To make sure. 

In the distance, I heard loud sirens blare all of a sudden. Far louder than any police siren. An Endbringer. What timing. 

I… grinned a little. I had ideas for what I might do about one of those. I didn’t fear dying. Didn’t fear fighting. I knew how to reach for Victory. Crazy Hat Lady had tempered me well, I thought. The path had shown me some interesting tricks. 

Relay Humans. Yes. I thought I might enjoy directing an army of parahumans. 

I fired one more laser at Sophia’s creepy skull, and left the bodies there. 

I didn’t look back.

THE END