Tau Kaylan here. You were probably expecting my father, right? Don’t worry this is still his journal, I think. He just fobbed off today’s entry on me. Dad’s gotten into the habit of leaving the task of filling up the journal to us kids.

He’s gotten lazier as the years go by, and far too often his response to work he can’t be bothered to do has been, “the ancients had kids to solve human resources problems and that’s good enough for me.” It’s been roughly four years since his last entry. I just turned twenty-one two weeks ago.

I might have gone a little overboard during my birthday bash. While our parents never exactly prohibited us from having small amounts of alcohol when we were at home, they never really let us have access to too much of the good stuff. When I turned twenty-one, a few of my friends took me to this bar for immortals and high-powered superbeings and one thing led to another, and I got a little drunk.

I don’t remember much of what happened that night. Or so I shall claim till the day I die, for the reason of not implicating myself legally, and for the sake of my sanity. However, I ‘can’ say when the following morning came, several planets in the nearby solar systems had switched places, one planet was missing altogether, and there was a new species of living music notes running around mating with as many geese as they could find.

Thankfully no one was hurt. None of the planets that were “mysteriously” meddled with were inhabited. Especially the one that I tried to headbutt...I mean the one that vanished. As for the thing with the living music notes and the geese...I don’t really have any excuse for that one. Drunk reality benders and dirty limericks are a dangerous combination, kids.

In our household, having five parents meant five times the love, and five times the scoldings and punishment when one fucked up. Mother Margot, Mother Maci, and Mother Henrietta at least just kept it to words. I was lectured about my responsibility as a Kaylan and the danger I could have put myself and others in with my reckless use of my powers.

Which was….admittedly fair. I sometimes wish I was a normal kid born with no sense of perspective, and no idea of the potential consequences of my actions. Unfortunately, I have an IQ longer than an average phone number, and I had a head filled with dreadful inherited memories. So I was feeling pretty guilt by the end of the lecture, because if anything had gone wrong, even if my parents could fix it eventually, an unspeakable amount of suffering would have fallen upon the universe because of my idiocy.

As if I wasn’t feeling guilty enough, my birth mother, Mother Primrose gave me a lecture to end all lectures. Then there were tears. So many tears. Unlike my other mothers, she was less concerned about the physical harm I could have caused to myself and others and more concerned about the mental harm that would have resulted had I not been as lucky as I was.

Finally, there was my father, the great Montgomery Kaylan. He didn’t lecture me. All he did was deliver a flick of his finger. The punishment us children within the Kaylan household all knew as the infamous “flick”. The mothers might ground us, give us timeouts, or spankings, but when dear old dad delivered the flick, that’s how we knew we fucked up.

Fun fact, those flicks hit with roughly the force of ten nuclear bombs. That probably sounds like a horrific way to punish a child, but to put it in perspective my physically-weakest sibling Juno, could probably walk-away from a star going supernova, with barely more than a serious case of sunburn. OP parents leads to super-OP children, even their adopted children end up super-OP, simply due to parental overprotectiveness.

The flick to us, was what a normal forehead flick, or flick to the back of the ear, would be to an ordinary child. Yet somehow, the lack of actual pain didn’t make it any less terrifying. First off, dad was somehow able to deliver those flicks from anywhere. Regardless of whether he was there or not. Did you just try to mind control the teacher? Flick. Did you just use your powers to bully an undeserving mortal? Flick. Did you just use the Kaylan name to gain an inappropriate advantage when your natural talents are already pushing it as far as cheats go? Flick. He delivered those flicks freely, in pretty any situation, where we started acting “young master"-y. He spoiled us rotten, but he was always real adamant on the whole not letting us grow up as supernaturally powerful tyrants thing.

The second reason the flicks were fears, was because dad occasionally accompanied those flicks with what he called “learning opportunities.” The worse you’d fucked up, the more likely he’d do or give you something that would “create an opportunity for growth”. One time, my older brother Seren screwed up by turning this kid into a rat. The kid was a bit of a shitheel, but we were supposed to be above that stuff, and also Big Bro forgot to limit the change so that the kid was at least a person on the inside.

Dad found out, and after the inevitable flick, Dad then had Seren, personally go find the ingredients to cure the kid’s condition. That meant going on a journey into an unstable dimension, where big bro spent an objective week, and what was probably a subjective month, struggling to maintain his human form. A harsh punishment, but a fair one considering that the kid never quite recovered from his time as a rat, and their family’s cat legit almost ate the kid. Or maybe he did eat him? And then dad brought the kid back to life? Either way, it was dad.

(Note: Dad cured the kid’s condition himself, the moment he found out, which was long before Seren returned, or even left on his trip. The sole point of the punishment was about Seren not messing with people’s bodies for no good reason.)

The point being, that dad was really big on having us be more like our mom’s and less like him. Which was weird because we all think dad’s pretty swell, but whatever. So after my birthday screw-up, I was pretty sure I was screwed. And sure enough, after delivering a flick to my dome, Daddy-dearest then informed me that he got me a job to pay for the damages I’d caused.

I may have made things a little harder for myself by asking exactly who was out there demanding damages. Cosmological damages weren’t something that Terminus-Earth or any of its extraterrestrial neighbors had the standing to ask for and even if they did have the standing, we were the Kaylans, which brass-balled bastard was going to come after us?

After receiving another lighter flick for mouthing off, I was informed that the damages were karmic in nature because at least one of the worlds I’d messed with could have carried life, if given enough time. The party requesting payment for this loss in opportunity, was the universe itself.

I uh...I kind of still call bullshit. You know that thing, when your parents say something, and at the back of your mind, you’re pretty sure it isn’t an actual thing, even if you still can't call them out on it. I’m still at least half-sure dad was just taking the piss and making up an excuse for the punishment just like big bro’s journey to cure rat boy.

At least, that’s what it feels like to me, but then again maybe it “is” a thing. In which case, I don’t really want an entire universe pissed at me. My dad’s the badass, not me, it’s going to be a while before I can tell entire swathes of reality to fuck off.

The end result of a single night of mischief was me, being consigned to one of my family’s myriad clockwork universes, as the universe’s Administrator of Judgment and Balance, as well as the head official in charge of the world’s “Grand Dungeon”. That actually sounds like a pretty sweet gig, which is why I’m quite nervous about how much work and trouble lies ahead of me.

My dad can be a bit unpredictable, so it isn’t impossible for him to turn a punishment into a present. Yet, at the same time, even his presents could turn out to be headaches if the headache was of the sort that he assumed we’d be able to manage.