Heromaker's Legacy [Worm AU/Original]

[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy

Story Index:
Free Week
[1.1] [1.2] [1.3] [1.4] [1.5]
Back to School
[2.1] [2.2] [2.3] [2.4] [2.5]
Weekend 1/3
[3.1] [3.2] [3.3] [3.4] [3.5] [3.6] [3.7]
Weekend 2/3
[4.1] [4.2] [4.3] [4.4] [4.5] [4.6]
Weekend 3/3
[5.1] [5.2] [5.3] [5.4]
Building
[6.1] [6.2] [6.3] [6.4] [6.5]
Expanding
[7.1] [7.2] [7.3] [7.4] [7.5]
Hero
[8.1] [8.2] [8.3] [8.4]
Kidnapping
[9.1] [9.2] [9.3] [9.4] [9.5]
More of the Same
[10.1] [10.2] [10.3] [10.4] [10.5]
Unending
[11.1] [11.2] [11.3] [11.4] [11.5] [11.6]
Trauma
[12.1] [12.2] [12.3] [12.4] [12.5] [12.6]
Meeting
[13.1] [13.2] [13.3] [13.4] [13.5] [13.6]
Exploring
[14.1] [14.2] [14.3] [14.4] [14.5]
Discovery
[15.1] [15.2] [15.3] [15.4] [15.5] [15.6] [15.7]
Vengeance
[16.1] [16.2] [16.3] [16.4] [16.5]
Delving
[17.1] [17.2] [17.3] [17.4] [17.5] [17.6]
Home Again
[18.1] [18.2] [18.3] [18.4] [18.5] [18.6]
Missing Pieces
[19.1] [19.2] [19.3] [19.4] [19.5] [19.6]
Running
[20.1] [20.2] [20.3] [20.4] [20.5] [20.6]
Alien
[21.1] [21.2] [21.3] [21.4] [21.5] [21.6]
Falling Apart
[22.1] [22.2] [22.3] [22.4] [22.5]
Theft
[23.1] [23.2] [23.3] [23.4] [23.5] [23.6]
Reunions
[24.1] [24.2] [24.3] [24.4] [24.5] [24.6]
Aftermath
[25.1] [25.2] [25.3] [25.4] [25.5]
Playing Games
[26.1] [26.2] [26.3] [26.4] [26.5] [26.6]
Follow the Ball
[27.1] [27.2] [27.3] [27.4] [27.5]
Touching a Nerve
[28.1] [28.2] [28.3] [28.4] [28.5]
Called Out
[29.1] [29.2] [29.3] [29.4]
Throwing Down
[30.1] [30.2] [30.3] [30.4] [30.5]
PRT
[31.1] [31.2] [31.3] [31.4]
Storytime
[32.1] [32.2] [32.3] [32.4] [32.5]
Fifteen Minutes
[33.1] [33.2] [33.3] [33.4]
Frustrations
[34.1] [34.2] [34.3] [34.4] [34.5]
Quiet Beginnings
[35.1] [35.2] [35.3] [35.4] [35.5]
Snakebite
[36.1] [36.2] [36.3] [36.4] [36.5]
Fading Tensions
[37.1] [37.2] [37.3] [37.4]
Fresh Troubles
[38.1] [38.2] [38.3] [38.4] [38.5]
Quiet Times
[39.1] [39.2] [39.3] [39.4] [39.5]
Troubling Visitors
[40.1] [40.2] [40.3] [40.4] [40.5]
Courtly Ponderings
[41.1] [41.2] [41.3] [41.4] [41.5]
Night On The Town
[42.1] [42.2] [42.3] [42.4] [42.5]
Made You Look
[43.1] [43.2] [43.3] [43.4] [43.5]
Slow Start
[44.1] [44.2] [44.3] [44.4] [44.5]
A Busy Day
[45.1] [45.2] [45.3] [45.4] [45.5]
Looking Forward
[46.1] [46.2] [46.3] [46.4] [46.5]
Zoo Day
[47.1] [47.2] [47.3] [47.4] [47.5] [47.6] [47.7]
Preparation Interlude
[48.1] [48.2] [48.3] [48.4] [48.5] [48.6]
Game Day
[49.1] [49.2] [49.3] [49.4] [49.5] [49.6] [49.7]
Tea Party 1
[50.1] [50.2] [50.3] [50.4] [50.5] [50.6]
Tea Party 2
[51.1] [51.2] [51.3] [51.4] [51.5] [51.6]
Arising
[52.1] [52.2] [52.3] [52.4] [52.5]
Running Start
[53.1] [53.2] [53.3] [53.4] [53.5] [53.6]
Thunderous Stop
[54.1] [54.2] [54.3] [54.4] [54.5]
Cleaning Up
[55.1] [55.2] [55.3] [55.4] [55.5]
Interviews And Debriefing
[56.1] [56.2] [56.3] [56.4] [56.5] [56.6]
Quick Turnaround
[57.1] [57.2] [57.3] [57.4] [57.5]
Prelude To Conflict
[58.1] [58.2] [58.3] [58.4] [58.5] [58.6]
Smashing Introduction
[59.1] [59.2] [59.3] [59.4] [59.5] [59.6] [59.7]
Presentation
[60.1] [60.2] [60.3] [60.4] [60.5] [60.6] [60.7]
Emotional Overload
[61.1] [61.2] [61.3] [61.4] [61.5] [61.6] [61.7]
Snap Decisions
[62.1] [62.2] [62.3] [62.4] [62.5]
Discussions
[63.1] [63.2] [63.3] [63.4] [63.5] [63.6]
Back and Forth
[64.1] [64.2] [64.3] [64.4] [64.5]
Finding the Words
[65.1] [65.2] [65.3] [65.4] [65.5] [65.6]
Scheming and Teaming
[66.1] [66.2] [66.3] [66.4] [66.5] [66.6]
Planning Before Bed
[67.1] [67.2] [67.3] [67.4] [67.5] [67.6]
Sleep Is Only The Beginning
[68.1] [68.2]1​ [68.3] [68.4] [68.5]
No Pain No Gain
[69.1] [69.2] [69.3] [69.4] [69.5]
Not As Expected
[70.1] [70.2] [70.3] [70.4] [70.5]
Accelerating Crisis
[71.1] [71.2] [71.3] [71.4] [71.5]
Math Magic
[72.1] [72.2] [72.3] [72.4] [72.5]
Mother of Monsters
[73.1] [73.2] [73.3] [73.4] [73.5]
Hoodwinked
[74.1] [74.2] [74.3] [74.4] [74.5]
Storms
[75.1] [75.2] [75.3] [75.4] [75.5]
Sightings
[76.1] [76.2] [76.3] [76.4] [76.5] [76.6] [76.7]
Fulfilling
[77.1] [77.2] [77.3] [77.4] [77.5] [77.6]
Mistakes
[78.1] [78.2] [78.3] [78.4] [78.5]
Reactions
[79.1] [79.2] [79.3] [79.4] [79.5]
Preparing
[80.1] [80.2] [80.3] [80.4] [80.5] [80.6]
Facing
[81.1] [81.2] [81.3] [81.4] [81.5]
Heroic Legends
[82.1] [82.2] [82.3] [82.4]
Boats and Domes
[83.1] [83.2] [83.3] [83.4] [83.5]
Seeking Answers
[84.1] [84.2] [84.3] [84.4] [84.5]
Considering Invitations
[85.1] [85.2] [85.3] [85.4] [85.5]
Reverberations
[86.1] [86.2] [86.3] [86.4]
Rescue or Revenge
[87.1] [87.2] [87.3] [87.4] [87.5]
Escalation
[88.1] [88.2] [88.3] [88.4] [88.5] [88.6]


Omake:
Saint's Log by @Looking Glass
Collect Them All by @Looking Glass
High on Spiders by @RedPockets
You Got Some 'Splainin to Do by @Looking Glass
Centipede Crusader's Debut by @yojorocks
Sleepy Sophia's Spider by @edale
Questions of an Economic Nature by @Swarmer31857

Art:
Simurgh's Tea Party by @Lirana

Warnings:
Possible Cannibalism (spiders are cannibalistic), possible body horror

Rant from original posting:
I do not like Dark. Why!? Why have you people infected me with all of your Worm fanfiction?

To those who insist the canon must be read: I say No. I do not read dark fiction, I did not even read HP past the point where he starts carving words into his hands. But you have infected me with this mess, and so I must needs purge it by writing. So if you insist - then don't read it. That simple.

To those who insist that conflict is vital, that bad things have to happen to good people to make an interesting story: I say No. Don't like that, don't read it. That simple.

To the rest of you, well, in spite of you have infected me with this ailment, some few of you might recognize the name, the writing, from simpler and happier times, and know that I generally write with at least a modicum of proper grammar and a relative paucity of misspellings, with characters that grow in power and skill, and generally don't touch idiot balls, and might find in what follows something or other to enjoy.

This is a crossover, but not with anything you are likely to have read before. There is an OC, but he is out of the story before it starts. It is not an alt-power Taylor, nor an SI. Taylor is the hero, and her munchkining is the reason she is the protagonist - she is not the only one to be affected by the OC's butterflies, but she is the one that does something substantial with it.

The crossover is with my NaNoWriMo project of a few years back, based on a munchkin of my own, and I'll say no more yet, to let it come out in the story - just know that the crossover is drawing on 120k words of backstory, not just a thin idea or plot device.

Enough maundering. Time for story, bit 1 (I have five bits written so far, trying to do this in the style I see here on the board.)

Additional rants/commentary:
On spider silk
Arachnae
Arachnae 2
On conflict
On boiling water
Annette's decision from Quest perspective
More on Annette's decision
On the plates
Annette's decision 3
Arachnae 3
On Lockheed's tunnels
On Tattletale's mindset
On Taylor and Transhumanism 1
On The Fountains of Life
On Taylor and Transhumanism 2
On converting an Endbringer to air


Thanks to @Teatree for the suggestion:
List of Modified Bugs with their Powers and other Creations (warning: Spoilers! for what has been posted so far.)

Spoiler

Generic attribute: applies to all bugs modified with the beestuff

• Taylor can use the bug' senses, and control it, from anywhere

Generic features:

• Laser eyes - applicable to some bugs, modified or unmodified, but not spiders
• Portals/Warps/Tunnels/Openings - make two non-contiguous regions of space/time share a boundary for a time; built-in protections of curled spacetime prevent 2D blade type effects; size and relative angles position continually controllable - size changes at both ends simultaneously. Non-permanent; impermeable to light/air (permeable to air when solid or liquid is passing through); invisible (light passes through both ends without 'seeing' the warp at all) - Taylor's range is extended by these as a sphere with a radius of her normal power's radius minus the distance between her and the near side of the portal.
• 3D Printing - by laying layers of sand, fusing it with laser-eyes (i.e. hitting with just enough heat that the sand relaxes into liquid globules that join up but can cool quickly), Taylor can build up larger three dimensional objects of glass and stone.
• Weaving - Taylor is developing her skill at this, starting from felting, progressing to a simple weave, then silk and twill weaves. Actual patterned weaves may appear at some point.

Bugs & Sundry

1. Shelob - black widow, "Grow bigger, form armor, weapons, something!" Arachnae added - indestructible thread. Has demonstrated ability to produce beestuff.
2. Mac - mole cricket, "Just grow big and strong," "Come on, grow!"
3. Lockheed - dragonfly (Eastern Pondhawk - bright green body) - flying eye in the sky initially; Arachnae modded him to add portal ability; demonstrated to be able to take Taylor's dreaming mind on flights with him
4. Masque - spiny backed orb weaver - red and black shield expanded to form demonic face mask with black spines, elongated legs hold on to Taylor's face, cephalothorax and mouthparts positioned to appear to be Taylor's mouth, and to be able to pass food to her. Cloak - blue and black, Athena. Dagger - Yellow and black, Archimedes.
5. Arachnae/Good-self - bold jumping spider - turned into half-spider half-Taylor; i.e. drider form, except fully chitinous exoskeleton, can consume beestuff, use it to modify bugs - added Lockheed's portals to herself
6. cicada-killer wasps - 3 inches long, 3 venom systems (natural, epi-pen equiv, numbing agent)
7. Laser flies - physically unmodified houseflies - laser eyes with adjustable frequency, intensity, collimation, polarization and auto-eye tracking targeting
8. Martin - dragonfly (Great Blue Skimmer - blue body) - same as Lockheed, demonstrated to be able to take Taylor's dreaming mind on flights with her
9. Garden spider (large black spider with yellow markings) - produces colored silk (gold, red, blue, yellow, black, green, and white).
10. Minor dragonflies - modified to be slightly larger, have portals - number in the hundreds - modified just enough to be remotely accessible to trigger portal, portal then extends control area to their location
11. Minor spiders - random non-widows modified to produce dragline silk similar to black widow silk
12. Needle spider - slender spider capable of crawling through cloth and sewing it with thread she is weaving, now capable of sewing patterns
13. Flying spiders - spiders with wasp characteristics enabling flight
14. Large black and white jumping spider - larger (handful and a half), long lifespan, power to give Arachnae the power to summon Arachnae/Taylor's copy of the Book, indestructible thread, other currently unspecified abilities
15. Button beetles - extrude chitin plates as larvae
16. Ring spider - duplication function identical to brown spider 228, display hologram of scan pages, scan cubes or beings, convert specified volume to air
17. Gold beetle - communication method for Amy
18. Blue beetles - communication method for Danny, healing tied to "I'm fine, really."
19. non-descript beetle - convert specified volume to air
20. glowworms - continually purify and restore air, create their own food, dispose of their own waste
21. Galatea - clone of Taylor with spider in place of brain - basically a remote Taylor drone
22. Clotho, formerly Princess - black and white jumping spider (#14), recolored to white and red - shake to rain healing water - capable of teleportation
23. Sleipnir - scaled up roboticized first shedding of Gears, basically massive bronze spider-bot
24. Hawkeye - clone of Shelob's child grown and morphed into human male appearance - biotinker & M.A.S.H. dispenser
25. Radar - clone of Shelob's child grown and morphed into human male appearance - biotinker & M.A.S.H. dispenser
26. Dutch/Julius/Usman - clone of Shelob's child grown and morphed into large human male appearance to act as bodyguard for Annette
27. Heromaker Bet - Galatea-style clone of Heromaker from scan recorded in the Book; produces magic internally
28. Bakuda x 3 - Galatea-style clones of Bakuda
29. Unnamed female - female spider grown and morphed into human female form using Proteus' power
30. COUS - Centipedes of Unusual Size - under development
31. Mistress Night - Galatea-style clone & Proteus spider-human - white haired, white robed woman
32. Maya - Galatea-style clone & Proteus spider-human - four armed Hindu goddess
33. Rapunzel - copy of Mistress Night (Proteus-style) resized into a little girl with long hair
34. Amy Two - Galatea-style clone of Amy Dallon, modified by Amy
35. brain-spiders
36. Large dragon - Dragonslayer-smasher
37. Swarm of wasp-brained dragons
38. Manwë - angelic figure
39. crystal spiders - created by Queen Administrator
40. Alice - spider-brain Taylor clone running Taylor-OS courtesy of Queen Administrator
41. Varda Star-Kindler - angelic figure created by QA through Manwë
42. Black Knight - winged angelic figure, one of the Chosen, wields a pole-arm
43. Self-willed multi-powered grumpy-old-captain crab boat
44. winged feminine angelic figure, has Smáragdos' and Storyteller's powers combined
45. Alice's Avatar - Galatea-style clone driven by Alice
46. Yavanna - angelic figure created by QA through Manwë - has Proteus' powers
47. Ares - Galatea-style clone with embedded spider-powers - war-form.

Amy's Creations!

1. Amy 3.0 - two copies of Amy 2.0 (created by Taylor - spider-brained clone of Amy controlled by Amy) melded into one being, with a spider twinned from Xero melded into it - can create new Amy 2.0 on-demand. Has two brains - the spider-brain, and a Shaper-crafted replica of Amy's original brain.

List of Shelob's Children with their Powers (warning: Spoilers! for what has been posted so far.)

Spoiler

Orange - Flame on - Fire control Pura - Blue - Water 3. Sculptor - Dark Grey - reshaping stone (really, basically any mineral solid, including elemental solids) 5. - Shining purple - electricity/lightning 7. Invisible 11. Proteus - biokinesis - his is the power that fuels Hawkeye beyond the M.A.S.H. spell 15. - constructs of imagination - can take realistic damage, not slowed by it 16. - plushes, thread, stitching, buttons, felt, filling, etc. 17. Smáragdos - Green Knight - wields green translucent energy, forms mobile, tactile energy constructs 20. Dis - Grey - grey-goo in spider form - spiders made of spiders made of spiders 23. Storyteller - glassy, transparent - illusions, glass web 24. Brigid (named by Sethlans) - Golden Yellow 28. Sethlans (self-named) - rust-red - conversion of materials into atomically precise composite materials with desired properties 29. Primus - Silver - consumes cameras, crafts robot spiders 30. Gold - worked with Primus 35. Deimne - knowledge 39. Flame - Red - Telepathy 43. Link - Black, orange highlights - multiple bodies - effective teleportation 55. Lighter - glowing web 61. Multiplicity - White with Yellow stripes - set location/velocity variables on objects/self 67. Nyx - Midnight (Prussian) Blue - insta-sleep, dreams 73. Pity - Light Blue - healing water 74. Fizz - Orange - fast, time dilation 80. Blink - line of sight teleport 94. Cotton Candy - Pink - web is spun sugar 99. Magi - Reddish Pink - copy skills, languages 115. Gears - Bronze - makes spider-bots 134. Thoth - black - ink, dye, paint, paper, parchment, papyrus, felt 167. Erebus - dark grey - non-Newtonian shear-thickening shadow-stuff! 180. Purple - scans contents of her cubical webs 197. Green - cross-kingdom biology 228. Xero - Brown - makes rabbits... and Taylors! 223. blue - mirrors - Alice in Wonderland 241. Arawn - Purplish-blue - golemancy 253. blue - portals 258. - transparent - diamond

List of Lairs and other Significant non-canon Sites (warning: Spoilers! for what has been posted so far.)

Spoiler

1. First lair - near a large abandoned warehouse, this was a maintenance shed with a grease trap and sump pit.
2. Second lair (Granite lair) - cave less than ten miles outside the city, has no direct human-scale connection to the surface; granite cave, so no stalagmites or stalactites, rough surfaces; Arachnae added sand and earth to make a softer floor and to provide living space for ants and termites and similar bugs, has newly carved smooth surfaced, chemically sealed showers+hot-tub.
3. Third lair - Shelob's lair - out-of-state granite cave, similar constructions with added sand and earth, Shelob and her children live here now.
4. Fourth lair (Basalt lair/Green Mountain lair) - basalt Arachnae-made cave, vaulted ceilings, smooth surfaces; partially connected chamber as backup for Shelob's lair, carved common area, in the Green Mountain National Forest in southern Vermont
5. Alien mecha's clearing - on mountainside above (not directly) the fourth lair
6. Gear's lair - place for all of Gear's noisy spiderbots.
7. Heromaker's training world
8. Alien moon - magical universe

Endnotes:
1. This marks a full year of posting, Aug 16 2014 - Aug 16 2015

 

[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy

Jan 10, 2011

At first, they passed entirely beneath her notice. Taylor was still sorting through the insects she could feel with her power, and thinking up uses for them, and bringing them in through her window to where she could look at them was her usual pattern. That there were a few that weren't responding to her control went missed as she focused on the ones that were flying or crawling to her.

It was Monday, though, and with everyone else back at school, she could not justify staying inside. She had wanted to avoid the pitying gaze of the neighbors over the weekend after coming home from the hospital, from having what had amounted to a psychotic break, and the scornful gazes of the other children in the neighborhood. Now she had screwed her courage up and headed out onto the streets, hunting for more interesting and useful insects.

She did not feel up to facing the library just yet, but it was in the back of her mind. Her dad's work at the Dockworkers Association had been bringing in less, and money was too tight to have room for a computer and a monthly network fee. The library would give her a chance to research more interesting bugs, and especially which of the useful ones could be found locally.

When her eyes passed over the the otherwise normal seeming bumblebee, she felt an odd stutter. She tried to bring it down to her, pausing where she was walking on the sidewalk, but it did not even slow as it passed into a fenced yard, beyond her reach.

She reached out, trying to feel for it, and discovered that she could sense it, could tell where it was, but she could not influence its movements at all. After the first week, as she had fought back the intense press of sensory stimuli from far too many tiny minds, she had not tried much to actually see through her insects' eyes or use their other senses.

She tried now, struggling to focus on just that one bee. She stumbled forward.

"Watch where you're going," a voice mumbled, and she was brought back to the here and now. Standing on the sidewalk was probably not the best time to be playing with her new power. She did not want to lose the odd bee, but when she reached out for it again, she could not locate it within her range. She was up to almost a block now, in terms of the distance within which she could feel and control all the bugs.

It was more than just insects; more even than just bugs, as she had determined from a check of a dictionary that it applied generally only to small insects, and in a more technical way just to a subset of insects. Her power ignored that distinction, giving her control of worms, of millipedes and centipedes and importantly to her, of spiders. It was these she was particularly in search of, due to a half-remembered television program about spider silk and its potential. It was one of the reasons she wanted to get to the library, to determine which spider had the best silk, at least of the ones that were nearby.

Now she wanted one of those bees. She did not have any particular use in mind, as yet. She just wanted to know what was different about them. Why did it not respond to her? Were there more like it? Was it just those bees? Or were there whole groups of bugs she could not control?

She knew it was not all bees, as she had felt and controlled both honeybees and bumblebees in her swarm previously.

She encountered no more of the odd bees that day, and was on the verge of considering it just a fluke, but the next day when she went out again, she spied another. She set to following it, letting her sense of its location guide her while she paid better attention to her surroundings this time. She ended up in a local park, one that held a number of bittersweet memories for her, between memories of Emma, her erstwhile friend and more recent tormentor, and of her beautiful mother, Annette.

The most bittersweet facet of the park was the former presence there of one of the so-called Fountains of Life, the fountains that had started appearing nearly ten years before, that had healing waters. If it had still been there when the crash occurred, she might not have lost her mother. She did not know why it had vanished, but there were rumors that it had been due to the PRT, the Parahuman Response Team. She was not sure if she believed the rumor, but she was bitter about the absence of the healing waters that could have, should have saved her mother.

The bee finally lit on a flower in the park, and she hurried towards, eager not to miss her chance. The usual fear or disgust response common to young girls when faced with creepy insects was not something Taylor Hebert had felt at all since her trigger, since that darkest moment of her life, when she had gained her power. She could hardly even remember what it had been like to be frightened or disturbed by insects.

This one would not be in her control, but it was no longer in her to fear it. She slowed when it lifted again, but thankfully it settled onto another nearby flower, and she moved closer, having to restrain her temptation to bend over and sneak up on it. She did not want to attract any attention to what she was doing, after all.

She half expected to get stung, but when her hand closed on the bumblebee, it crumbled into nothingness in her grasp. She felt her fingers close over it, she had not missed, she was certain of that - but they kept closing, they were never stopped by its body, and when she opened her hand, there was nothing there, not even dust.

Was this the power of some other parahuman? Had she exposed herself? She looked around, but saw no-one paying any attention to her, and quickly moved away.

Next >>

 

[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy - 1.2

Jan 12, 2011

Her first capture of one of the strange bees started with a test. She knew that it either had whoever had created it observing her and destructing the bee remotely, or an automatic process. If it was automatic, it could not be from any contact, as it had landed on two flowers without disintegrating. Nor could it be from contact with living things, as the flowers were alive. It might be mammals or animals, though, and this she could test.

Landing on the bee with one of her midges was tricky, but manageable. She was leaning up against a fence on her street, the same one the bee two days before had disappeared behind. Now that she knew she could not put her own hands on it, she was going to try using her power as a parahuman. Good practice for later on, when she made her debut as a cape, as a parahuman hero.

She was tracking another bee, she was not sure if it was the same one or not, that she had spotted going in to the yard. Telling if it had vanished when her midge touched it was not so easy, since based on the way the previous one had disappeared under her fingers, there would have been no change in speed of the midge on making contact. That was alright, as she simply had to wait a bit.

When the midge suddenly rose into the air without her controlling it, she felt a small surge of triumph. The bee had not vanished, and that meant she could capture it!

A dragonfly buzzed past, sailing into the yard. It soon returned with a fat bumblebee grasped beneath it. Its flight was oddly erratic, though, more so than the weight of the bee could account for. It was not sufficiently out of line as to be uncontrollable, though. She headed for the house, the dragonfly zipping along behind her in a series of zigzag patterns. When it paused in the air, she noted, it was consistently being dragged back towards the yard where it had captured the bee.

It did not follow her into the door of her house, instead heading up to hover outside of her window. When the window sash was lifted a bit later and the screen pried up and lifted a bit, it flew into her room. She replaced the screen and lowered the sash again, considering the dragonfly and its cargo. It still seemed to be experiencing an anomalous pull to the fenced in yard, even though she could see that the bee's wings were unable to properly flutter.

She walked over and sat at her desk, followed by the dragonfly, which tried to set down on the surface, but had to keep buzzing its wings to pull the bee back into position. Taylor looked around the desk for something she could use to keep it still, and finally settled for sliding two schoolbooks to either side of it, pressing it gently between them.

"Definitely not natural," she said softly, as the dragonfly took off and she quickly placed another book on top of its right wing, pinning it in place. She pulled open her drawer, and pulled out the craft knife she had slipped in there the day before, along with a magnifying glass. It had taken a bit of hunting to find the glass, a relic from her earlier childhood.

She had sat holding it for several minutes after she found, remembering happier days, when there was still shipping in Brockton Bay, before the union strike and the scuttling of ships in the harbor had shut the docks down, visiting the park with her mom and dad, and hunting down bugs to examine with the glass. Today, she was all business, focused on the bug, and did not even pause as she moved the glass so that she could see the bee.

Even up close, it looked normal. So, it was not some mechanical, Tinker-made robot. At least, she did not think so. She could see the individual hairs sticking out on its fuzzy thorax, and the even tinier hairs on the intricate legs, and it felt like an insect to her power. It just did not respond to her.

She held the glass in one hand, and lifted the craft knife in the other. She took a deep breath. She could do this, she had already fed some of her bugs to the spiders she had collected, it was no different killing one herself. Right?

She lined up the knife above the tiny gap between the head and thorax, somewhat relieved that the fat little bumblebee did not react or try to get away, and stabbed down. The knife penetrated, but hit something hard inside. She pushed, and the head came off, tearing something out of the body at the same time, glittering in the light, a black spike out of the back of its head.

"Is that Tinkertech?" she wondered, tapping it with the small knife blade. She had to set down the magnifying glass and grab a pencil to pry the head and the glittery black thing apart. When it finally came out completely, she saw what looked like an oddly spiky crystal. Under the magnifying glass, she saw flat planes and sharp edges, but some of the spiky bits split and split again, looking almost hair thin at the ends.

It did not seem to be moving at all, so she lifted the books away. The two halves of the bee remained still as well, so whatever it was, she had apparently disabled it. Well, assuming there was not a homing device in it. She carefully pushed it away from the rest of the bee, then gently touched the bee's severed head with the tip of her finger, waiting to see which piece would disappear. Nothing happened.

She was more hesitant to touch the crystal, not merely for the fear of it vanishing, but also because it was so spiky, and the fineness of the hairs at the ends of the split spikes made her think of cactus spines. She held it down with the knife tip, then pressed against the extensions with her pencil, testing their flexibility. They did bend, but not much, and she was worried that pressing hard enough to break them off might leave her with splinters the next time she cleaned her desk.

Worse yet, if this was a Tinker tech thing, or some other cape's power manifestation, and it controlled insects, what if it could grow into her, take her over like something from an Earth Aleph horror movie?

She wanted to go hunt for a box to contain it in before she tried anything, but she did not want to leave it only to discover it could in fact move on its own and was just waiting for her to not be watching. So she cheated instead, and brought over a cockroach to hold on to it.

As she went in search of a box, trying to decide between a small metal change box or a plastic food container, she held that cockroach in her mind, waiting for it to either feel movement, or to leave her control if it turned out the spiky crystal could take control of something else.

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[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy - 1.3

Jan 15, 2011

Taylor had two notebooks now, one with her record of all the torments and bullying she had experience at the hands of the Trio, her former friend Emma, Emma's new BFF Sophia, and their hanger-on Madison, and a new one with her ideas regarding her powers, costume designs, fighting methods, the notes she had made about the various villains in Brockton Bay she might have to face, and the heroes she might work beside. This second notebook had a new section now for ideas about her competitor, the cape that was controlling these bumblebees.

Her swarm-sense, her ability to feel and know and control the insects around her, was getting a continual workout as she sorted the insects she could feel, hunting for the remote control bugs. She was a little concerned that if her opponent could tell where they disappeared, they would be able to find her, so when she detected one, she had ignored them unless they were on the same side of her range as the one she had first taken.

She felt a little regret for the owners of the house with the high fence where she captured most of them, that she might be causing them to be targeted, though, so she had also visited the park a couple of times, and gone on a longer walk the day before. In total, she had now collected seven of the controlled bugs. They had all been bumblebees, with the same color patterns.

The first crystal she had gotten had turned water black when she washed it, but had still been black after the washing, though the glitter effect was stronger. When she shined a light through it, it cast little rainbows all around the room. Smashing it into a powder with a hammer might have been overkill in terms of preventing any possible back-tracking or signalling device in it, but when there had been no news reports of attacks by parahumans that night, and no-one had come to the house hunting her, she had relaxed a little bit.

Now she was in the basement. Her stupid spiders had eaten each other when she had taken her walk the previous day and left them on their own for too long, reducing their numbers, so she had decided to move everything to the basement to give them more room, and to reduce the chances that Danny would come across them. She still had not told her dad that she had become a parahuman, and she was not really sure when she would.

One little pile of dust, and six washed black stones. Under the magnifying glass, they looked identical, but there was something strange about the smashed one. She had washed it again after smashing, and while some of the bits were still smoky, there were grains in there that caught the light like they had fire in them.

The dust and pieces were in a plastic container, where she had carefully poured them; the rest were in a metal gift box with a dented bottom from where she had hammered the first stone. The black water was in a second plastic container, along with the thin handkerchief that she had used as a filter to get the bits of stone out after washing them. It too was stained black. She had not dared just pour it out yet, as she did not know what the black was, and because there might still be crystal bits, small enough that they had made it through the cloth, floating in the water, and she had wanted to see if they would collect or grow in the container. That container was tightly sealed.

One of her larger black widow spiders crawled over the edge of the metal container, and carefully tugged the six whole stones around and lined them up, nudging them back and forth with her needle-like black legs until they were all positioned identically. Taylor leaned over, not reacting at all when the spider caught on to her dangling hair and scurried up into her curls. She was focused on her magnifying glass, comparing the stones.

She had hoped to learn something from them, but so far, they held an utterly boring sameness. Only bumblebees, the stone was always in the same place in the bee, and even under the glass, she could not find any distinctions between them. They did not appear to do anything to insects that came into contact with them, nor had the stones disappeared when she touched the powder and dust of the crushed stone. She had still not worked up the nerve to touch the spiky undamaged stones, but she suspected that there was something critical about the stones being in the bee. When the two were unlinked, neither bit was apparently active at all.

Well, unless of course they were sending a homing signal and the cape in question was not actually in Brockton Bay and had to come from farther afield to deal with it. She was a little tense about that possibility, but she had her insects to warn her, hopefully.

She swept five of them to the sides of the container, and pulled out her next tool, a pair of tweezers. She carefully grasped the main body of the stone in the tweezers, pressing down a bit to hold it firmly against the metal bottom, then used her knife to snap off the extensions one at a time, until she had a mostly convex stone, and a bunch of pointed shards. She scraped around the stone with the knife edge, sweeping the shards away.

Lifting the stone out with the tweezers, she held her breath to keep from blowing it away, and dropped it into her outstretched palm. She was anticipating it vanishing and watching with eager eyes to see how it happened, but it landed solidly on her palm and lay there.

Setting the tweezers down, she carefully picked up the stone with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand. She pressed it against the edge of the metal tin and drew it down. It etched a scratch into the paint, the metal shining through. She looked about for a bit of glass, and finding only her magnifying glass available, she pressed it against the outer edge. It carved a fine scratch into the surface. "Harder than glass," she murmured. "Still breakable, though."

Taylor was not sure what use these things could be yet, but then, it had taken a while for her to come up with usable tactics for her bug control powers as well. They were doing something out there, though, and she was determined to find out what.

As to how? She had a plan for that.

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[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy 1.4

Jan 16, 2011

Taylor glared at the innocuous hole in the ground. She had found another of the infested bees and painstakingly kept it in range, following it until it finally landed somewhere other than a flower. She was hot, tired, and ready for this to be over. But the ants she had sent into the hole had instantly vanished from her control. As had the cricket, fly, and spider she had sent in after them.

Were they dying? Or stepping through some warped space or tinker-tech gateway?

She knelt down, allowing the little orb-weaver spider that had climbed to the top of a blade of grass near her to climb onto her hand. It looked a lot like one of her black widows, except for being brown on the thorax and legs, and having an intricate, glossy black and white pattern on its abdomen. She had it weave a noose then slip it over a fly's neck. The orb weaver's grip on her hand was too tiny to feel, yet strong enough that it was able to lower the fly down on a long strand of silk it wove.

She dipped the leashed fly into the opening, then drew the line back. It lifted up as though it had ended at the opening, as if clipped by an invisible knife. She looked around, then quickly got to her feet when she saw someone had come into view on the path. She brought a butterfly over so she would have something to appear to be watching until the jogger passed on out of view, then glared down again.

Looking about, she trotted over to grab the nearest stick she could find off the ground, then went back and gingerly poked it in the hole. Pulling it back, she found it had a glossy smooth, perfectly flat face on it now. Everything that had entered the hole had simply vanished. Even as she glared at it, a bee flew out of it. A dragonfly captured it, and it went into her bag with the four others she had collected while following the one she had chosen as her target.

She had brought the little art knife with her, and was tempted to try it and see if something that was totally inorganic would be destroyed as well, since obviously the ground was not being sucked in to it. Actually, that was a thought. She dug the stick into the ground near the hole, pushing dirt into it. The hole remained, perfectly circular. So it was destroying the dirt. "Clever bastard," she complained of the unknown tinker.

Worms and burrowing bugs rose at her command, coming towards the hole from every side, disturbing and aerating the ground, and she paid attention to where they vanished, and where they did not. She found a blockage there beneath the ground, but her insects could not lift it. In fact, as they disturbed the ground beneath it, the infuriating object sank further. She did not dare try to reach in after it. Explaining the bullying to Danny had been hard enough, she did not want to imagine her dad's reaction to her coming home with a finger missing. Not that he would get angry at her; he got angry easily, but it had never been directed at her. But she would be throwing his inability to keep her safe in his face again, and she definitely did not want that.

She had something now that she could potentially bring to the attention of the authorities. Anything poked in that hole would vanish, or possibly cease to be. But she did not have any actual evidence of malfeasance yet, no proof that it was a villainous tinker, and not just somebody who had created artificial pollinators to take over if the bees died out or something.

She also had no explanation for how she could have found it that would not involve revealing her own status as a cape, and she was not ready for that, either. Her cape costume was far from done, and she did not want to go to the Wards with such a silly, useless seeming power, not until she could prove it was worth their time.

She could come back with a shovel, but if she was seen, how would she explain digging holes in a public park? If she had been able to control bigger creatures, rats or moles or something, she might have been able to push it up, but the worms and other bugs she had were too weak to push themselves in and lift it and the ground above even in a swarm.

So she camped it, instead, collecting every infuriating little bee that came out of it, until no more had left for over an hour, before finally heading home to get a late lunch.

She was relieved to come into the house, avoiding the rotten first step and ignoring the cat that was watching her from the street, and find a note from Danny saying he was going back to the Docks but would be home in time to make supper. That left her free to go to the basement and check on her projects.

The spiders had produced some respectable patches of woven silk cloth this time, now that they were separated enough that their territorial instincts were not getting in the way, and thankfully, she had apparently found the right triggers to get them to produce dry silk, without the glue that had made her first attempts unpleasantly tacky. She would need both sorts, of course. The capture-web silk cloth was an integral part of her plans for making chitin composite armor plates, but the basic body-stocking would definitely need to be glue free, or she would never be able to get into it, much less out of it. A single panel of the glue soaked silk, she had found, was nearly as bad as plastic cling wrap for crinkling and sticking to itself.

She set her pouch on the bench. Twelve more infested bees. Twelve more shards of crystal she still did not have a good use for, but something would come to her, she was sure. Processing them was basically down to a science now, thankfully. One after another, they were pulled out, held by the wings by her larger beetles, injected with spider venom, then torn apart, in a little assembly line of death, leaving a pile of twelve crystals. She pulled over the metal box, and popped the top off.

Seventeen whole crystals, one large spike-less crystal, and a mess of dust and spikes and randomly sized crystals. She stared at them, trying to think of something useful to do with them. They shattered on a hard impact, so there was no point in trying to use them as armor, or knuckle-dusters to make her strikes harder, or claw-tips for cutting. They did nothing when applied to other insects. Even if they were composed of some gemstone and not a common crystal like quartz, they were smoky and full of black dust, so no chance of selling them and getting funds to make her costume faster.

Only one thing was coming to mind, and it seemed silly. It would save a bit of money, though. She looked at the old goggles she was planning on harvesting lenses from. They were not in the best of shape, the smoky lenses had fine scratches on them that would impair her vision.

Construction paper, fine grit of stones hard enough to scratch glass, spider glue, yes, she could do it, and save the money she would otherwise have to spend on sandpaper.

She set one of the unmarred stones aside to save, and set to smashing the others, then ran them through her cloth filter system to wash them. She had spilled most of the bits into the top of the metal tin to start shaking to assort them by size, when she noticed an odd glow.

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[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy 1.5

Jan 16, 2011

Taylor stopped, staring at the single undamaged stone, which had an internal glow now shining from the heart of it, her own heart in her throat, waiting for it to explode, or for an approaching cape to smash through the wall or ceiling. She felt her pulse even as her consciousness expanded outwards, pressing for every last dreg of information she could drag from the entire block's worth of insects around her, as she slowly set the tin down and backed away from the desk.

Her eyes fell on the cardboard boxes that held her black widows. They were too close, if the explosion was even as bad as a hand grenade they would be destroyed. She moved forward again to pull them away, then stilled. Her insects had not sensed anything anomalous approaching. She leaned over, staring into the metal tin. The stone was still glowing, but nothing else seemed to be happening at all.

Maybe it was not a trap, not a defensive mechanism she had triggered?

Rather than poking it herself, she let one of the spiders crawl into the tin and prod it, after she had moved to the far end of the room. Nothing happened.

"Damn Tinkers," she groused. "Come on! If you're going to light up like that, the least you could do is actually do something when I poke you. Grow bigger, form armor, weapons, something!"

A flash of brighter light from inside the tin cut her off, and her breath caught in her throat again. There was movement there, movement she had not caused. She could not see in the tin from across the room, just into the very top bit, but it seemed as if it was suddenly full. She had the spider climb out of the tin, and she released an involuntary sigh of wonder. First a single leg rose out of the tin, and pressed against the edge, then another. The swollen spider squeezed itself up and out of what was now a confining space for it. It's carapace gleamed blackly in the weak light of the incandescent ceiling lights, but its eyes shone red, and there was a red light beneath it. The top of the legs and the thorax and upper abdomen were blacker still, a thicker and rougher surface that noticeably rose from the otherwise smooth surface.

"Holy shit," Taylor whispered. The beautiful spider was still hers, still in her control, but there was something more. Not only was it larger, the size of a largish tarantula, but for the first time, she was really seeing through the eyes of one of her insects, she could see herself! She hurried across the room, leaning over and cooing at her beautiful creation, running a finger over the rough back. There were more than the usual eight eyes, as well, she saw, including new eyes that gazed backwards, and the central pair had something inside that moved and changed the direction of the gaze, something she did not think her normal spiders had.

Ignorant or uncaring of any risks to herself, she caught the massive spider up in her hand, placing its engorged chelicerae with their hypodermic fangs, linked to venom glands containing a substance that might be as much changed as the spider itself, within easy stabbing distance of her flesh, and only then noticed that the stone was missing. "Is it in you?" she whispered to it, "It is, isn't it? You merged with it somehow, but you are still mine, not his." She stroked the thorax between the eye spots, and breathed in sharply in surprise when the spider made a humming sound by rubbing its mouthparts together rapidly. "Oh, that is so cute!"

"I shall name you," she paused for a moment in thought, then looked at the extra eyes, "Shelob!" The spider climbed up her arm and onto her head, while she rubbed her finger around the inside of the box. No sign of the stone that had been there, glowing. Seeing now the same view out of multiple eyes was less disorienting than seeing herself looking at herself had been, but she was certain she would grow used to seeing multiple views simultaneously. It was simply too useful to abandon.

After confirming that the stone was completely gone, she took the largest unbroken piece, the one she had chipped the spikes off of, and set it on the dragonfly. "Come on," she whispered, "make it bigger, make it stronger." Nothing happened.

"Make it bigger," she commanded loudly. Nothing stubbornly continued to happen.

"Oh well." She picked up the stone and put it back in the tin, then settled back at the desk and began sorting the stones by size, using the lid of the tin.

She would put a bit in it, then holding it at a very slight angle, vibrate her hand, letting the differential movement of the larger and smaller bits separate them. Tilting it up on edge so that everything slid down to the lip while staying relatively spread allowed her to use her finger to rub the dust out into a pile, then repeat the process, until all the dust was out, then do the same to draw out the smaller stones, until all she had left were the larger ones.

It took several passes, and she lost some of the dust to the air, but she soon had enough separated to try making her differently gritted sandpapers. She cut several sheets of construction paper into squares using her art knife. Shelob jumped from her head to the desk, her body bouncing on her long legs like a truck on its shocks, then came forward and lay down a thin spray of glue on the paper. It took the large spider a surprisingly short time to have the square of paper uniformly glistening with glue. A cockroach scuttled forward, sacrificing itself to feed the large spider. Shelob's fangs stabbed into it, spraying digestive acids into the body, skipping the paralyzing poison as unneeded, while Taylor spread the small stones as evenly across the paper as she could manage.

A thin, whispy smoke rose from the cockroach's body, and Taylor saw through the spider's eye as the cockroach crumpled inward as the spider sucked up the almost instantly juiced insides. "Better not let you bite anyone," Taylor commented, noting with pleasure the enhanced speed and effectiveness of the spider's fluids. "I wonder how strong your silk is?"

She set the massive spider to laying down a square of woven silk back in its cardboard box, after she had removed its prior efforts, then headed back up to clean up for dinner.

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[Gundor Gepein]

But... Square Cube Law...

 

[Yanslana]

.... aaaaand I just now paid attention to the first line of the chapter... I feel so lame.

So we're in the 2 week off that Winslow gave Taylor, after her hospital stay, correct? Still confused about what's happening... but rough guess with some stuff that you confirmed is that Taylor's finding leftover tinker-tech from your OC, who is out of the picture. She still has her canon powers, but with the tech she'll have extra buff compared to her canon self? I'm kind of curious on how much of a 'buff' it will be, since Worm fics nowadays seems to stick to the usual 'level grind' and gradual escalation, since you're giving her a 3-month buffer, when she official step out, what would her 'worthy opponent' be in this case.

 

[Chojomeka]

Oh this is going to get interesting isn't it?

 

[DragoLord19D]

But... Square Cube Law...

Click to shrink...

 

[RJC1212]

But... Square Cube Law...

Click to shrink...

Your silly.XD

What square cube law?

 

[TheGrum]

But... Square Cube Law...

Click to shrink...

Square/Cube doesn't actually get broken until later. Shelob is actually within viable size range for spiders, albeit some internal modifications would logically be required to ensure competent oxygenation.

Actually, however, DragoLord19D got close to the truth with his meme-epithet.

To Yanslana, yes, this is in the off period - though she only got a week off - (most off) one week in hospital, one week off, then back to school. Secondly, yes, the OC is out of the picture, though (s)he may appear in later, retrospective snippets to establish some background once we really get into it. Right now, you are seeing the influence of the OC as she sees it. He is not an in-universe OC, however. As I said in the pre-story rant, the crossover is with a NaNoWriMo from a few years ago, recently completed, 120k words of munchkining, not based in Worm. She is assuming it is a Tinker's work because that is what makes sense to her.

Currently, she actually has less of Heromaker's Legacy than any of the others who have received it so far.

Incidentally, I am still hoping to get an answer on the timing of Dinah's trigger, of when Coil learned of it, and of when he started planning/attempting to kidnap her, and the same for Lisa/Sara, precisely because I am starting this so early in the sequence. Have to know how things butterfly.

 

[Gundor Gepein]

From what I recall, Dinah triggered a few weeks before the bank heist. I don't know when Coil started planning to kidnap her, but many of the Undersiders' previous jobs had him helping them with his power so he certainly wasn't using them as distractions for kidnapping attempts. It's entirely possible that the bank heist + kidnap was his first attempt.

 

[Yanslana]

There's an official timeline, but it doesn't answer your questions. So I think you're ok to make your own. The problem with Coil is he likely collapses the failed kidnapping, so to Dinah and everyone else who might have stepped in via chance to thwart the attempts, the bank job is the first attempt. Same with recruiting Lisa, you could set it up so that Taylor rescues Lisa, but then the 'join at gunpoint' just never happened.

 

[DragoLord19D]

Question can we have a link to your NaNoWriMo project?

 

[Gundor Gepein]

I imagine that would be Spoilers.

 

[TheGrum]

There's an official timeline, but it doesn't answer your questions. So I think you're ok to make your own. The problem with Coil is he likely collapses the failed kidnapping, so to Dinah and everyone else who might have stepped in via chance to thwart the attempts, the bank job is the first attempt. Same with recruiting Lisa, you could set it up so that Taylor rescues Lisa, but then the 'join at gunpoint' just never happened.

Click to shrink...

I was not so much concerned about actual attempts - but it would be a bit of a faux pas to have an interaction with powers prior to her gaining power, etc. As for it being the first attempt to Dinah, since her power is also precognitive, I would think that at the very least she would be getting hints beforehand of a possibility of a kidnapping attempt. As I understand his patterns from the fanfics I've read, Coil tends to set up the operation, split the timelines and do Go/No Go. Which means that the operation to kidnap her might have been set up multiple times, as since hers is a probability based precog, well, that someone went to the effort to set up an operation to kidnap you seems like the sort of thing that would trigger a probability that you would be kidnapped.

As to the link to the NaNoWriMo, DragoLord19D, that would indeed, as Gundo Gepein pointed out, be spoilers. May happen later on though. Fair warning, it is emphatically not written for the readers, but for me. It was always intended as background material for a multiverse hopping fic, and is a rather technically dense extrapolation of a whitepaper I wrote a while back.

 

[DragoLord19D]

As to the link to the NaNoWriMo, DragoLord19D, that would indeed, as Gundo Gepein pointed out, be spoilers. May happen later on though. Fair warning, it is emphatically not written for the readers, but for me. It was always intended as background material for a multiverse hopping fic, and is a rather technically dense extrapolation of a whitepaper I wrote a while back.

Click to shrink...

Awwww...

 

[TheGrum]

Heromaker's Legacy 2.1

Jan 18, 2011

"Are you sure you're up for it?" Danny asked for the third time. Her grace period was over, and in spite of nothing having been done about her tormentors, due to a lack of evidence, and an absence of eyewitnesses even though she knew the events had been seen, she was headed back to Winslow. They could not afford private schooling, and while Arcadia would have been by far her preferred option, as it was the school the Wards, the junior members of the Protectorate, attended, it had a waiting list that made it a non-option.

If her mother, Annette, had still been alive, then home-schooling might have been an option, but in a one parent family it just was not viable.

"Yes, Dad. I can't give them the satisfaction. I'm sure it will be better now." Her smile was brittle, and she knew he saw through it. She just hoped he would not comment on it. His inability to cause any real change in her situation would just make him angrier, and it would not help anything.

She gave him a quick hug, and headed out the door. Before she was halfway down the street, another bumblebee was taken down by her dragonfly and dumped in her pouch.

"I'll have to make extra-sure the Trio can't catch me today," Taylor sighed mentally, "the last thing I need is to get in trouble for letting bees lose in the school."

She could not pass up the chance to get them, though. Whatever it was the unknown Tinker used in his bees, it had an awesome synergy with her powers and until and unless he showed up and prevented her, she was going to make the most of it. Shelob was awesome, and so cute, and she could not wait until she had an upgraded dragonfly for aerial reconnaissance, and...

She stopped in her tracks, eyes widening, and an uncontrollable grin spreading on her face. She had just taken the step that put the cardboard boxes in their basement out of her range. She had felt all her little black widows wink out, knowing that they were now free to their own devices, with her only able to hope they would stay on task and not consume each other.

That was not what was important, though. She took another step, and then another, her grin broadening. She picked up speed again, walking briskly, as in her basement, Shelob danced a little jig. She could still feel the altered spider, still see through its eyes, still control its movements, even while all the rest were now out of reach.

---

It felt restricting, going in to the school and leaving her swarm behind. There were flies enough about, though, for her to mark the Trio, if she could find them. So she lingered at the end of the hall from the entrance, watching for them to come in. She tagged Emma and was looking for Madison, when she was shoved roughly forward.

"Watch where you're standing." Sophia swept past from behind her, and Taylor suppressed the sudden, violent urge to cover her in biting insects. Sophia had vanished into the crowd before she got control enough to remember that she was supposed to be tagging them.

Realizing that she was running out of time, Taylor headed for her first class, getting lucky and spotting Madison and tagging her on the way.

She was distracted in her classes, her work continuing to suffer. Before, her grades had been falling from the Trio's interference, their destruction of her work, constant distractions, and general sabotage. Now her concentration was divided even more, between watching for interference, monitoring her swarm-sense for Emma and Madison's locations, sorting the swarm around the school for the best insects to bring home with her, and watching over her black widows through Shelob's eyes.

Tagging two of the Trio was enough for her to catch them coming towards the bathroom she had retreated to when lunchtime came, and she slipped out ahead of them, after using her bugs to lock one of the stalls.

She made it out of the school without them managing to corner her again, and even better, she managed to tag Sophia before she left. Insects to use for tagging people went on her list for possible uses of the stones, if it worked when she applied them to other creatures. Being able to tag them and know where they were beyond her limited range would be excellent.

As soon as she was out of sight of the school, a dragonfly flew by and released a bumblebee just in time for it to slip into her pouch as she opened it. Two more such meetings occurred on the way to the park, where she loitered for a while, gathering more. By the time she got home and sat down to do her homework, she had seven more bumblebees to process.

Much as she wanted a remotely viewable tagger, or an aerial reconnaissance drone, she knew her first deliberate conversion, assuming that she had guessed correctly about what caused the first glowing stone, would be a digger.

She plowed through her homework as quickly as she could manage, then slipped downstairs and processed the bumblebees. Shelob crawled up the workbench to watch, and Taylor went to stroke her as soon as she had all the bees in the dis-assembly line. It was hard to tell for sure, since Shelob was a spider and their apparent size was so dependent on their leg position, but she rather thought Shelob might have gotten bigger.

She did not recall having seen anything through Shelob's vision that would indicate a shedding, and poking about did not turn up a large, empty exoskeleton. She did find a tape measure, and made a note on a piece of the construction paper she had brought down to make sandpaper, that Shelob's current body length was three and an eighth inches.

Four destroyed stones later, and none of the others were glowing at all. Taylor paused, confused, then realized the problem. Shelob was the one glowing, the red had gotten brighter beneath her abdomen, in her eyes, and on measuring, Taylor found her a full four inches in the body. Transferring Shelob across the room, she tried again with the remaining two stones. The last stone still showed no visible glow, but she decided to try it anyway.

The digging insect she had picked up from the park was an odd sort of insect with short rear limbs and fat serrated forelimbs. She put the stone on the insect using the tweezers. "Just grow big and strong," she said, "Come on, grow!"

There was a dimmer flash, and the insect went from one inch long to four and a half. "Yes! You will do just fine, I'm sure." She did not get any sense of vision from it, but then, as a burrowing insect, it might well have had an atrophied sense of vision to begin with. But it definitely looked big and strong, hopefully enough so to get whatever Tinker device was storing or creating or portaling those bees up and out of the ground without risking her fingers.

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[Gundor Gepein]

I thought Taylor got ludicrous multitasking from her power?

 

[TheGrum]

I thought Taylor got ludicrous multitasking from her power?

Click to shrink...

She did, which shows up more later on. Her problem here is she is not yet off-loading her thinking on to her swarm, and is doing too much consciously. Basically, her worry about the bullies exposing the bees she is carrying and getting her id'ed or kicked out, combined with just general excitement over what she has already discovered, has her paying the bare minimum of attention to the teachers and the work.

 

[Gundor Gepein]

Gotcha.

 

[Chojomeka]

This keeps getting more and more interesting Grum....good job.

 

[Yanslana]

Ok, just want to clarify some things here.

Taylor found a bumblebee she can't control, she grabbed it, and is able to get these tiny stones from its body.

She went around BB and found more bees like this, and end up collecting more stones from the bees.

She found a spot where the bees are being 'created' at the park, she dug into the spot, and here's where I'm a bit confused, she found a round thing in the spot that she managed to feed to one of her spiders? Or did she stick one of the stones from the bumblebees into her spider by accident, and the spider mutated?

Anyway, mutated spider immediately gave her additional vision input, so it's like she unlocked one of her ability from later on in canon and also managed to upgrade it to a premium version. And the latest chapter shows she has either a longer control range with the spider, or maybe unlimited range with it.

 

[Khaos]

Are you the person who wrote Rune Ranko?