The last thing Taylor remembered was being shoved into her locker, but now she was blinking as she stared up at a cathedral ceiling. Glancing to either side of her, she noticed that she was in a round chamber with a single set of obvious doors...giant doors with no obvious hinges, handles, or other opening mechanism visible. Statues sat to either side of the door, one obviously depicting a naked Scion and the other depicting an equally-naked silver woman, scaled to the doors.
Taking stock of herself, she found herself wearing absolutely filthy clothing. The same clothing she'd worn to school, fouled by the mess in the locker...but it took her a minute to realize that her glasses were missing. She could still see without them, which was...weird. Pulling herself to her feet, and hoping she could find somewhere to clean off, she examined the room in a little more detail. Unfortunately, the room was round and featureless except for the doors and statues. She couldn't even see the source of the light that was present, even when trying to figure out where it was based on her shadow.
Moving over to the doors, she attempted to push them open. Nothing at all happened, and there was nothing for her to grab onto to pull the doors open. Grumbling, she shifted her focus to the statues. Each was ten times her height...and she quickly determined that there wasn't much going on with them either. They were too slick to climb and there was nothing obviously useful in their feet.
Circling the chamber four times didn't reveal anything else, except that at some point while she'd been looking away the statue of the silver woman had vanished. There was no way the doors had opened long enough for it to leave without her noticing, but it was no longer there. A quick check showed that there was no sign of it ever having stood there. Frowning, she looked up at the statue of Scion, then moved back to the doors to see if there was anything she'd missed there.
"Our apologies for the wait," a strangely-neutral voice called out from nowhere. She jumped and looked around, noting that the statue of Scion was gone now as well. "Neither controller has opted to intervene, so it will take a couple of minutes to finish setting things up for you."
"What's going on?" Taylor called out.
It took a moment before the voice replied. "You died again, making it obvious that additional adjustments may be needed."
"...again?"
"Your first death was trivial to correct. Three quarters of your brain collapsed under the sensory load, but reconstructing it with the prior snapshot and adding proper multitasking was a trivial fix. The following death due to biological shock revealed the need for this process."
That...what? She'd died twice now? Though she frowned. "Biological shock, like from the filth getting into my body?"
"We are not equipped to say, but will be having another assist in the reconstruction of your body. But first you will need training, and identification of any missed abilities you may require. Basic items will be made available before you leave, to assist you once your body is reconstructed, though future replacements will need to be procured elsewhere." There was a small pause, and a little more emotion in the voice as it seemed to whisper. "As the controllers did not opt to intervene, you may also be able to obtain abilities you deem...personally useful, instead of required, should they appear to be required."
A moment later the doors suddenly started to open outwards, accompanied by a feeling that the voice was no longer going to speak to her. Or no longer able to? Along with the doors opening, she suddenly knew that there were a couple dozen bugs in the area ahead. Exactly where each was, what they were doing, a little bit of what they were probably sensing...the latter very confusing to parse, and it only took a moment to realize that she could direct their actions.
Heading out the doors, she found herself in an obviously-artificial landscape. The terrain was far too angular, the trees and grass too perfect, and the path had a crisp edge that a professional landscaper would probably be jealous of if it didn't give off an impression of cheap computer graphics.
She followed the path, hoping to find somewhere she could at least attempt to clean her filthy clothing off in...or bathe herself, but she'd settle for cleaning the clothing. Instead, she came to a fence with a closed gate, presumably locked based on the glowing lock symbol on it. There was no sign of a key, but dotted lights reminiscent of fireflies trailed off to either side of the gate and into the terrain to either side.
A quick check revealed that the terrain was impossible to manipulate with her hands, solid as a metal sheet, and there were no obvious ways around the fence. That likely left using the bugs to explore, and several were in obvious tunnels. Directing a couple to look for the ends of the lines of light was easy enough, and keeping track of both sides of the path at once was oddly straightforward. It wasn't long before the two bugs found little buttons. Pushing either of them caused the dotted line of lights leading from it to glow brighter, and having both pushed at the same time caused the gate to unlock and open for her.
She flinched as several dozen bugs suddenly appeared in her senses, causing momentary pain but a moment later something shifted...as though reacting to the fact that she'd been in pain? That was honestly interesting...and she wondered if that might have something to do with the 'appear to be required' comment.
Eventually she moved forward, and found that the path turned a corner just past the gate...and then branched. One branch should go straight back into the path she'd just left, yet obviously didn't as a 'forest' sat there instead, with a sign holding a symbol that she interpreted as a warning that there were lots of bugs in the forest. The other branch seemed to head towards a river. She turned towards the latter for now, since water would be useful for cleaning her clothing, and hopefully herself, off. This started to give her an idea of what her range was currently, as bugs started to enter and leave it as she walked along...but she got the feeling she was still in some kind of lower-range 'training state' instead of having the full range she'd normally have.
Why she had that feeling was hard to say.
When she reached the river she found that it was, like the rest of the terrain, not terribly realistic. It also wasn't all that deep. Stepping into it did seem to wash away some of the filth on her though...and didn't leave her wet when she stepped out. A test of submerging herself revealed that she didn't seem to need to breathe here, but she did feel remarkably cleaner when she climbed back out of the 'water'.
Looking back the way she'd come from, she could see that the path leading to the gate she'd come through was no longer there. A sign that she couldn't go back to earlier areas, perhaps, and an indication that she should get everything she could out of each area before moving on. Nodding, she turned the other way and continued along the path, as the forest felt like it was something she would need to enter eventually.
It wasn't long before she came to what appeared to be a farmhouse...kind of. A crude fence held in flightless beetles the size of horses and spiders the size of dogs were in the barn out back. Stacks of wood and some basic tools sat against the house, and she carefully explored the building. Despite being a 'house', there were no real places to eat, sleep, or prepare food. Just work areas in a building otherwise laid out as though it were a house. The barn was similar in its own way, from what she could tell from the senses of the spiders.
Given that she didn't need to breathe here, she probably also didn't need to eat or drink, but wasn't as certain about sleep yet. But she also had ideas, and wanted to test them, so she headed back outside. Attempting to hop the fence failed though, and she ended up having to go find the door from inside the farmhouse to reach the large beetles. Perhaps this was a measure to ensure that she couldn't take them with her?
Whatever the case, she decided to test a theory and forced two of the beetles to ram her. That hurt like hell, but a moment later the pain faded. She repeated this a dozen times until the pair of beetles hitting her didn't hurt at all, and hoped that meant that she'd 'proven' a 'need' to be more resistant to blunt-force trauma. Plus she hoped that she didn't need to do that again later, especially as she was about to go see about covering her bases with the spiders as well.
An hour later she'd stopped being affected by the spiders biting her, but while they'd been doing that she'd recalled some things about spiders. That led to collecting some of the wood from outside of the barn to assemble a very basic frame to attempt to weave cloth on. The path didn't continue past the farmhouse, and attempts to move the spiders out of the barn hadn't worked, but perhaps she could figure out how to make spider silk cloth?
Taylor had no clue how long she'd spent at the farmhouse. There was no day and night cycle to track days with; there were no clocks, and no calendars. She'd managed to figure out how to use the correct silk to make spider silk cloth and ropes, had used the latter to attempt to 'draw and quarter' herself with the giant beetles a few times until attempts to pull her apart had also stopped hurting, and had used trial and error to eventually assemble a basic outfit. Even that had only been possible due to the farmhouse including a 'sewing area' with the tools she needed, though none of those tools could leave the room.
The outfit was reasonably form-fitting and she wanted to add some armoring to it, but didn't have anything to armor it with. For now it sat under her school clothes as added protection, in part because she had no way to apply any dye to it as that didn't seem to be something this freaky place supported. She also had a roll of fabric she could sling over her shoulder on a cord and a long silk rope tied around her waist multiple times as though it was merely an extra-long belt.
However long she'd been at it, the only other place to go right now seemed to be the forest. The larger bugs at the farmhouse would've been nice for that, but she made her way back along the path with only the smaller bugs in the area. She wasn't feeling like she was getting any better with their senses, unfortunately, and wasn't sure how to train that right now. Especially as the world only seemed to have the exact level of 'detail' needed at any point in time, so she might be getting things right and assume otherwise due to that issue.
"I get the feeling this is going to suck," she grumbled as she stared at the warning sign outside of the forest, but eventually she shook herself and moved forward. The world almost lurched as she stepped across the invisible line that denoted the edge of the forest itself, going from day to night in the same instant as the number of bugs in her range increased by a couple orders of magnitude.
There was a much more significant burst of pain in her head due to the sudden influx of sensations, though it seemed like it might've rapidly cleared. It was hard to say, because she had no real indication of the passage of time. That said, she was under the impression that she was still in 'training mode' for some reason. Perhaps because her range hadn't increased, just the local density of bugs? At the same time, she was effectively blind herself now, as there seemed to be no moon and only a few stars to provide illumination, so had to start trying to figure out how to use the bugs around her to navigate.
It had to have been hours later before she'd mapped out her immediate surroundings, figuring out enough to at least stick bugs on the border between 'path' and 'forest'. She was now in the middle of a clearing, and was very annoyed that the roll of fabric had vanished at some point. The coil of rope was still tied around her waist, but it now seemed that she'd wasted time making the extra fabric. There was also only a single path leading out of the clearing, and a quick test showed that she couldn't cross into what should be the trees. Bugs under her control could, in both directions, but it was like a solid wall to her even when the bugs indicated plenty of room for a human to slip through. The transition was obvious enough to the bugs though, allowing her to line the edges of the path with them so that she wouldn't walk into the barrier, and she started down the currently incredibly straight path.
After she'd gotten used to navigating while effectively blind, including a half-dozen turns in the path that she thought should've had it crossing over itself at least once, the forest threw a new problem at her. The path split in two, with a signpost sitting there that she had no way of reading. She spent some time seeing if bugs crawling over the sign could determine anything her fingers couldn't and came to the conclusion that either the sign was blank or there was no way to distinguish what it said without light. There was also nothing to distinguish the two directions from one another within her range.
Sighing, she went left, just because. That led her to another split with a sign. On a hunch, she went right, and this time didn't get a sign. But when she went right again she found herself at a sign again.
She very much suspected it was the same fucking sign, and directed some small spiders to make a web on it before going left. It wasn't long before she came to a split with a sign...and the spider web was there.
This was going to suck. Doubly so because when she went right, then left, and then backtracked she didn't return to where she'd been, but instead came back to the sign. Figuring out how to make a map while blind was going to be annoying, and needing to restart at every mistake was going to be worse.
It had taken far, far too long, but she'd built a map of turns on her back with what she suspected were supposed to be flies but didn't seem to be quite correct for that. Part of that was that she'd realized that none of the bugs in the forest had eyes of their own, but being able to fly made positioning them easier. Originally she'd just used 'face left' and 'face right', with another 'fly' moving along the line to keep track of where she was in the sequence, but then she had to add some facing down for 'go back the way you came' because that came up. Twice.
The sudden shift from having been wandering around blind in the dark to seemingly being in a forest clearing at noon had hurt her eyes, at least for a moment, but this time the sudden increase in the number of bugs in her range didn't cause pain. Her range was probably three times what it had been up to this point, and when she recovered from the change in lighting she realized that there were no paths this time. She already had the bugs in the trees mapping out what she could in the area as she looked around the new forest clearing, and quickly identified four different boxes in the area, but there was also what appeared to be an 'exit door' standing there.
Avoiding the obvious exit, she instead tested the border between the clearing and the forest. This time she could cross into the trees, and she headed for the nearest box instead of going for the obvious exit. When she reached the box she found that it appeared to be a simple wooden box with a clasp that was too strong for bugs to open, but she could open just fine, and inside she found a very nice pair of shoes. They appeared to be partially made out of spider silk, dyed, and for some reason she seemed to know how the soles and dye were made. She didn't put them on right away, but carried them with her as she continued to the next-nearest box. That held a backpack made out of spider silk as well, dyed more deeply than the shoes had been, with what looked like all of her school supplies in it, and she slipped the shoes into it as well for now.
The third box was now on the far edge of her current range, even sending her back through the clearing again for the quickest route to it. This one held a knife in a spider-silk sheath. There was almost a mental apology that knowledge of how to make the knife wasn't made available. The sheath was obviously designed to attach to the belt of the outfit she'd made, at least once a basic attachment point was made, but for now the knife joined the shoes in the backpack.
Reaching the last box was far more annoying. It was more 'under a tree' than anything else, and didn't have a normal clasp. She ended up using the rope around her waist to tie off to a tree so she'd be able to pull herself back out of the hole after half-crawling in, and found that the top of the box started to glow. Some fiddling showed that it was a touchscreen interface that allowed her to change several details of an insect-themed face mask. Eye shape and color, partial or full coverage, mandibles and/or antennae. She managed to make one that she was happy with, with a detachable bottom segment so she could eat without removing the whole thing if desired, and pressed the obvious 'done' button in the corner. The box popped open and revealed the mask she'd just finished making, which she grabbed before using the rope to pull herself back out of the hole before the mask and rope were both slipped into the backpack.
A loop around the outer edge of her range from the clearing had followed, hoping to find more boxes, but all she found was a hard border that even her bugs couldn't cross. Sighing, she headed back to the clearing and stared at the 'exit' door. Eventually she decided that she shouldn't wait any longer and reached out to open it, only to have the world go white as soon as she touched it.
Taylor hadn't known what to expect when exiting the weird world she'd been in, but thought that finding herself inside of Winslow shouldn't be too surprising. That she was down the hall from her locker was another issue entirely, and she retained enough sense to clamp down on the 'map the area out with bugs' instinct from her...training world experience, she supposed? There was a group of people at the locker though, and she was reasonably certain that the school was almost completely deserted otherwise.
"Where did the body go?" one of the group exclaimed. "Being stuck in place is one thing, but just vanishing?"
"If we're lucky," a man in a red outfit, which took a minute to recognize as Assault of the Protectorate since he was wearing a protective breathing mask, said as he looked around. "Ah, yes, she's over there, looking far less dead than she was a moment ago."
Several of the group looked over at her. Several emotions were fighting for dominance at this point. She was alive, which was better than being dead, and was getting to meet a member of the Protectorate in person. It wasn't Armsmaster, or perhaps Miss Militia, but Assault was still a Protectorate member. But she was also likely just immediately outed to the Protectorate as a parahuman, could smell the locker from here, and was mentally tired after who knew how long in that 'training world' thing even though her body felt like she could run for a few miles.
Sighing, she shrugged. "They say the third time's the charm, but I've only died twice today. I'd prefer to not push my luck."
Assault nodded. "Fully understandable. We've got a few things someone should talk to you about. There's one possibly time-sensitive item though. Did you see who shoved you into the locker?"
"That would've been Sophia Hess, with at least help from Emma Barnes in setting things up. Possibly Madison Clements as well."
The next few minutes had the names radioed to others by the police officers present and called in by Assault, before they realized that she wasn't wearing any form of protection from infection and got her out of the immediate area.
"Three hours isn't too bad," Assault said once they'd been cleared. He'd volunteered to stay with her while they waited for her father to show up, before any attempt to head back to the PRT building for a likely Wards pitch.
"What?" Taylor replied.
"Our best guess is that you were dead for around three hours. Four at the most, though it's been known to take up to eight hours for a trigger event resurrection to happen."
"...that's a known phenomenon?"
"Yes, though it's rare. Mandatory reading for Protectorate members though, and they even made me take a quiz to prove I'd done the reading. I...probably owe whoever put that policy in place an apology though, since it means I had a clue what happened to you today?"
"I'm still not entirely sure what happened to me today."
"You died in the process of getting whatever powers you got, but don't tell me what they are just yet. That led to your corpse being locked into place while you had a little 'vision quest' thing so that your powers could correct what went wrong. I was there to help them figure out why they couldn't move your corpse, by the way, but only recalled this phenomenon after the corpse disappeared. That would've been when you were resurrected nearby, fully healthy, and with far more knowledge of how to use your new abilities than most parahumans have at first. The running theory is that the forces that grant powers really dislike people ending up dead before they can do anything. Your bag implies that some of your stuff that got ruined was replaced, which is a crapshoot, and it's supposed to be fairly common to obtain at least a couple of items that can contribute to a costume, but I don't need to know about any of that kind of thing right now."
"...do you know why giant statues of Scion and a silver woman were present?"
"Nobody does, beyond the theory that powers came from him."
"There was a mention of 'controllers' not intervening too..."
"That sounds like someone is going to want to talk to you about things in more detail later."
She was already dreading the interrogations she was expecting.
It had taken her father pointing out that she wasn't wearing her glasses anymore to realize that she no longer needed them...and she was reasonably certain that she was less sensitive to sudden bright lights now. He'd been told that she had some powers, but Assault reiterated not discussing what they were in front of him. Once in the PRT building they were brought to a meeting room with a comfortable couch off to the side that she was encouraged to sit on, and she must've fallen asleep because she suddenly found herself being shaken awake.
"Um," she said, fairly certain she was blushing with embarrassment as she realized that she'd missed Armsmaster entering the room.
"The couches in these rooms are intended for napping," Armsmaster stated. "Only those who gain powers that remove or severely reduce their need for sleep don't need to take at least a nap after their 'vision quest'. We've had a productive couple of hours though. Emma Barnes has been taken into custody, text messages on her phones corroborating your accusations against her and Sophia Hess as well as indicating a number of other incidents where they targeted you. I believe that the BBPD is now up to seven arrests of Winslow staff members, and five PRT staff members have been detained as well."
"Why would..."
Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "You were asleep when they told me that they were more heavily involved than usual because Hess is Shadow Stalker, though that was primarily to convince me that you'd be safest here while they looked for her. She's apparently been violating her parole for months, but her 'case workers' in the PRT were working with Winslow staff and some others to cover that detail up."
"My apologies," Armsmaster said. "I should've considered that you'd just woken up and would be unaware of those details. Food should be here shortly, and I'll explain everything for you while you eat."
Taylor hadn't realized that she was starving until food was mentioned, and wondered if that was a 'known thing' for those who were resurrected or if it was just that she'd not eaten anything since breakfast. It wasn't long before a cart full of food was brought in and unloaded onto the table, even Armsmaster taking a few items as he claimed a chair that looked to be reinforced to be able to hold his power armor.
Over the course of an hour she learned a bit more about Hess being forced into the Wards, how the team that was supposed to keep an eye on her had decided to cover things up because if the ENE branch had no probationary Wards then the entire team was likely to be out of a job, and how Winslow had been burying things in part due to Mr. Barnes applying his own pressure. He was now in trouble for what were now believed to be falsified statements in front of a judge.
"All of this is, of course, before today's issues," Armsmaster eventually said. "Unfortunately, Sophia Hess has vanished, likely on the entirely-correct assumption that she's wanted for first-degree murder charges."
Taylor frowned at that, but her father spoke up first. "Surely you mean attempted murder."
"No, your daughter did die. The courts have ruled that parahuman powers resurrecting the recently-dead does not negate murder charges and there are significant signs of premeditation involved. Miss Barnes is also looking at the same charges for her portion of things. Things were...complicated the first time the murder victim testified against their murderer, of course, and the trials have been far less public in order to protect the privacy of the victims."
That made sense, though was a bit confusing. Frowning as she ate a couple of chips, she wondered when they were going to start asking questions about her powers, little as she knew at the moment. She didn't know if her 'more durable' attempts had accomplished anything, for example.
"So," her father said. "When does the pitch for Taylor to join the Wards come?"
"Next month at a minimum," Armsmaster replied. "Thanks to court orders the PRT isn't even allowed to officially record that your daughter is a parahuman until we observe that in some other fashion, and we're not allowed to accept discussions for a minor discovered to be a parahuman through this method for at least three weeks unless there's a belief of potential immediate harm. You'll be provided standard information pamphlets, but that's it."
Not much was discussed at home for the next couple of days, though some of that was due to it being the middle of the week. Taylor didn't have school, Winslow being closed entirely due to a combination of things, but her father had work...and the Winslow situation seemed to have added to his workload for the week. Of course, discussing a situation where she'd technically died twice wasn't exactly easy emotionally, at least once it hit the two of them.
She'd experimented a bit though, and found that she definitely had brute resistance. No extra strength, but she was much harder to injure now. In fact, she'd failed to injure herself at all, despite several attempts including hitting her own hand with a hammer and using a couple of knives to try and cut herself. Granted, she wasn't stupid enough to try to stab her eyes out or anything like that, but was quite happy with the idea of being far more durable than she had been.
There was also a much larger variety of insects in the real world, and she'd been working on identifying useful ones while going out jogging. Really, that was her justification for the jogging, but she'd realized that exercise was probably a good thing in general as well.
Saturday was where the pattern changed, as her father didn't need to run off to work.
"What powers did you get," he asked as they finished up breakfast.
"Originally just the ability to control bugs," she admitted. "But I was able to...cheat the 'vision quest', perhaps? Plus I'm not entirely sure, but I think my powers set a couple of things up as well and gave me a hint about things. Based on that, I was able to get a boost to my durability, but I didn't really run into any situations that would let me do more than that so I'm not any stronger."
"Huh. How much control?"
"I'm aware of every bug in my range, though that's...varied a bit. Where each is in relation to me and each other, what they're doing, I have trouble parsing their senses, but I can direct them individually or in groups. Or just let them do their own thing. The 'vision quest' taught me to use them instead of sight too, with a very annoying maze."
"Might have to bring you to the office with me on Monday. We've got a warehouse with a significant wasp infestation that just hasn't been a priority to clear out."
That...wasn't a use of her powers she'd considered, but she'd really not considered many uses at all.
It quickly turned out that being able to empty out pests from buildings was simultaneously incredibly useful and unfulfilling, though the latter was weird and made Taylor wonder if it was why more parahumans didn't focus on alternate ways to use their powers instead of fighting. Except for those that had powers obviously specifically intended to not be used in fighting, anyway, like the group of farmers that were generally ignored when they weren't driving the Slaughterhouse Nine off with pure defensive insanity.
Taylor had still made a small pile of money from the Dockworkers, directly from dealing with four different warehouses and indirectly when she removed pests from a few homes. She wasn't perfect, as she wasn't able to handle things like rats, but it gave her some funds and she was able to start gradually gathering up a selection of enclosures to stick spiders into. At least the ones she didn't have with her, anyway, because at first she'd decided that having something on hand that could surprise Hess would be a good idea and then it just kind of became a habit that had been continued even after Hess was spotted in Boston.
Closer to home, someone was still interested in Taylor. She'd started noticing the same three vans regularly following her, filled with what she believed to be mercenaries, and thanks to license plates having raised lettering had been able to note those down. Several times the occupants seemed like they were ready to jump her too, only to just suddenly decide not to for no obvious reason. She was getting to the point of checking with her father on changing their stance on cell phones for her own personal safety or seeing what it would take to legally be able to carry a handgun.
Coil scowled as he dropped the attempt to acquire Miss Hebert's services, still not actually sure what her powers were. They allowed her to know when his people started to move to engage with her, and seemed to let her take out individuals at range through means he'd not quite identified yet. That alone had kept his interest, even after it became obvious that she was also bulletproof and thus couldn't be recruited at literal gunpoint like Tattletale had been.
Honestly, if he'd found out about the defensive brute rating first he'd have deemed the girl useless and never found out about the strange awareness of her surroundings. Anything that could detect what he and his men were doing needed to be better-known though, before it could interfere with his plans...especially when it already was interfering.
Unfortunately, it would take far too long to get her into the Wards to find out what her powers were, and if they were properly useful he'd not want her bound to the PRT in that fashion. Maintaining a split timeline for a few weeks would restrict his options far too much and he might be forced to drop the wrong timeline due to other factors outside of his control for the duration. Hell, he usually needed two or three timeline splits a week just to handle the Undersiders and would be likely to lose the entire group if he was stuck waiting on a long-running timeline.
Maybe he could convince someone else to attack the girl, and then send the Undersiders to her rescue?
