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I read the opening line and thought it was going in the escalating direction of what could Taylor do with Leets power (i can't remember who wrote it but theres a hilarious one shot in someones snippet collection that i immediately thought of: clones of herself to do multiple things and a railgun i think targeted at Coil) but Taylor with Shaper is just fun for escalation
Carol/Brandish is gonna shit hardlight bricks since Amy now has a "villainous" type of power. How can bug control be anything else except the 2nd coming of Marquis? Amy will want power, and she'll have bugs to get it. She only treated Amy with indifference before, now she'll be actively hostile. CPS incoming! And there will likely be hostility towards Taylor since she "stole" Amy's convenient healing power to get rid of her bug control. Logic & Carol are non-mixy things.
I read the opening line and thought it was going in the escalating direction of what could Taylor do with Leets power (i can't remember who wrote it but theres a hilarious one shot in someones snippet collection that i immediately thought of: clones of herself to do multiple things and a railgun i think targeted at Coil) but Taylor with Shaper is just fun for escalation
Carol/Brandish is gonna shit hardlight bricks since Amy now has a "villainous" type of power. How can bug control be anything else except the 2nd coming of Marquis? Amy will want power, and she'll have bugs to get it. She only treated Amy with indifference before, now she'll be actively hostile. CPS incoming! And there will likely be hostility towards Taylor since she "stole" Amy's convenient healing power to get rid of her bug control. Logic & Carol are non-mixy things.
It's an interesting one for sure. The fun will be in finding out how they deal with the new paradigm. Will Danny get out of himself enough to protect Taylor from Carol's less endearing attitudes regarding use of powers?
How will Taylor react to the trio now that she can basically turn them into Tang with a touch?
Another intriguing possibility would be depowering Vicky by switching with an unpowered like it happened to Regent.
I really hate you @CmptrWz, I had read this right before work so all work long I was stuck trying to work with tons of ideas that can be used with the idea of a power swap gun. Taylor and L33t's of course being the first and what she would do with it, then Taylor somehow switching with Calvert, and last the idea I wish I can actually able to right having tattletale switch with Amy or even better have it switch with Glory Girl and just the chaos and fallout of Tattletale getting Glory Girl's power and Glory Girl getting Tattletales and getting stuck with the revelation of her family. LMAO, never change and keep writing CmptrWz. Let the ideas flow!!!
Another idea on what can happen is that the PRT pushes Taylor to take over Amy's job as a healer. But since Taylor doesn't have the (same) hang-ups as Amy, she reveals that not only she *can* work on brains, she is a biotinker. The PRT (and maybe the public and New Wave) will c**p bricks. The Shaper shard is going to have a ball in a new host without hangups, but QA is going to be miffed though.
And also on the hot seat is Leet. Not only did he (unwittingly) target the famous 'neutral' healer, he may have permanently depowered Amy. Leet will probably be met by a blanket party as soon as he hits custody. He'll be lucky to be able to walk or use his hands by the end of it.
Not to mention that Cauldron is going to 'disappear' Leet to another world to try and replicate his power swapping gun. Not that they will have much luck with that.
If some of those hit had gotten away so the PRT couldn't take a close look at everyone, my thought would've been that the "young girl" in question was Dinah and so Regent now has precognition powers. But having it be a untraumatized civilian is very interesting.
If some of those hit had gotten away so the PRT couldn't take a close look at everyone, my thought would've been that the "young girl" in question was Dinah and so Regent now has precognition powers. But having it be a untraumatized civilian is very interesting.
he other possible options in the area didn't look any better, too much chance of hitting a Ward, and...why was the gun heating up?
He barely threw the gun into a half-filled dumpster before it exploded, but Über hadn't gotten him into the car before they were suddenly blitzed and his vision went black.
No, it's stated that it was thrown in the garbage because it was very clearly starting to smoke and head toward explosion. I suspect they'll know exactly where because of the fountain of garbage from the dumpster.
Leet didn't actually swap his powers with anyone. What his gun actually did was swap powers between two targets hit in sequence (or cause cancer if neither had powers). Thus Alec no longer is a parahuman, and some rando bystandar now has his power. Which he may not have realized is the case. So he'd have had to shoot Grue, Then shoot himself to swap powers. But again, I think Leet assumed the swap would occur when he hits his target, thus wasn't aware that each pair of shots had an effect. He was assuming he hit doors or door frames.
So. Amy and Taylor have powerswapped. Regent has apparently swapped powers with an unknown parahuman as neither he nor the other girl have ALL the cancer, like the two non-powered bystanders that were hit.
Leet's facing two counts of aggravated murder, even if those two victims aren't dead YET.
The gun is destroyed. so the power swaps are effectively permanent.
Sophia's shitcanned. Armsmaster's very nearly shitcanned as well for taking the Lung credit and encouraging that stupid undercover plan of Taylor's.
Taylor's outed, at least to the PRT and New Wave (which means everyone)
But... Taylor being able to munchkin with Shaper though? I think thigs are looking... up?
Counterpoint while Armsmaster did take credit for Lung and then dislike Taylor for the blame he also took he did not encourage the undercover plan. Indeed he called it stupid and said that a untrained teenager would not be able to pull it off. Nor would he give her protection for committing a major crime like she was asking. He told her to hang up the costume, go sole or join the Wards. That was his recommendation.
So while he did rant and insult her he did not encourage her going undercover except by reverse psychology. Which i honestly do not think Armsmaster is socially aware enough to do deliberately. So you cannot blame the undercover idea on him that was all Taylor.
Actually I wonder what went different in this timeline for him to tell Piggot about the incident? Or was it a last minute attempt to cover himself since he knew she would soon be talking to the PRT and her involvement in Lung would come out?
EDIT
just reread it. Yes they mention Armsmaster only reluctantly mentioned the whole involved in Lung after Taylor said something. So basically only when he had no choices that weren't worse. They knew about the poison and could have linked it with insect venom now they know to look. Meanwhile the fact he lied about her presence means his credibility is low despite it being a Hero vs a newbie villains word.
"And Armsmaster reluctantly admitted that the girl that took the first shot for Panacea had been heavily involved in taking down Lung," Renick noted. "But only after she said something about it to an officer."
I was predicting Carol not being rational enough to assign blame to the proper person. Once she hears "Amy's powers got swapped with a bug controller" she'd stop listening and go ballistic from there and blame it all on Taylor and ignore any and all efforts to alert her to the actual cause. It just seemed like something Carol would do with her tunnel vision view of the world.
Hmm... Excellent. While Taylor, as shaper's new host might not be able to fix what Amy did to the insects at the bank to interfere with her connection, due to not knowing where the heck those particular bugs are, removing Amy from the area has likely removed that specific issue, leaving her adapting to the overwhelming stimulus of the alien senses.
Taylor, having already had her brain adapted to QA's method of data management will likely be able to process Shaper's data quite effectively, and may even be able to retain 'snapshots' of various biologies as background information. Something Amy was sadly unable to do. Taylor could, with Shaper's power, viewed through a mind already altered by Administrator have Precision control, iterative adaptation, multi stage complex molecular systems... Being able to revert changes precisely rather than working the flesh like a lump of clay on a metaphorical potters wheel. Her practice compartmentalizing and limiting her awareness of her swarm will also likely allow her to shut off the automatic sensing aspect of her new power allowing her to touch others casually without getting an involuntary read of their bodies.
Amy, now with Multithreaded multitasking and limited area omniscience via insect senses is also likely to be able to jump start adaptive breeding of her insect swarms. Something another Taylor did once upon a time. Rapidly breeding an ever changing and adapting swarm that becomes more hardy, stronger, faster, etc, faster than it should due to her influence and biological perspective.
The timing of certain trigger events in canon is, frankly, a mess. I'm running with earlier dates that are still supported by canon statements, even if other canon statements push things to later dates. Those later dates don't make a whole lot of sense for a number of things anyway, in my opinion, though the more I pay attention to a number of things the more of an obvious mess canon Worm becomes to me.
And canon Worm was already a hot mess to me, even without adding in Ward.
Taylor hadn't been willing to tell Emma that her father couldn't afford to send her to summer camp, and instead she'd been accepted for a paid summer internship. She was spending the two weeks she would supposedly be at 'camp' getting trained, and if she did well then she'd move on to the next stage of things for the rest of the summer. Why Brockton General wanted teenage girls, and only girls, for an internship hadn't been explained, but a couple of Dockworkers with appropriate-age sons had apparently gotten satisfactory answers.
The first day of training had started with twenty of them reviewing the most basic rules and procedures of the hospital, a basic floor plan, and security measures they would need to be aware of. They'd then moved into paperwork concerns, including signing off on the realities of having access to medical records. It seemed that their parents had already signed off on background checks that were mandated by law for the latter. By day four they were down to fourteen, two girls having failed background checks and the other four just having decided that the work wasn't for them.
Why they needed to know so much about filling out basic medical paperwork, which was apparently to be transcribed by proper medical professionals afterwards, wasn't really explained. Lessons in properly removing bandages and disposing of various bits of medical waste made a little more sense, though they were only really taught how to apply bandages as a side effect of that making it easier for them to practice several removal methods. They'd lost another five girls by the end of that, some to failing to pick things up fast enough and a couple to being unwilling to continue, and then the last few days had actually felt like more of a stamina test than anything else. Running around the hospital with obviously-manufactured fetch tasks, barred from using the elevators, and they'd gone from nine down to only four. Despite feeling like a stamina test, it had actually been a test of being able to learn the hospital's layout, and only the four of them had passed that test.
It turned out that the elevators had enough 'where things are' signage to make them a bit of a cheat.
The four of them were given a schedule for their first week, each coming in on a different afternoon for a 'proper evaluation'. Taylor had been assigned Wednesday, and the staff had admitted that they only had at most two slots after the first week. Which meant that she wasn't going to want to admit to Emma about the internship yet, not until she knew if she made the final cut. But she hadn't told Emma what kind of summer camp she was supposedly going to and being able to demonstrate some new medical knowledge would suffice.
Something had happened over the past couple of weeks that had resulted in Emma having a 'new best friend' and ditching Taylor entirely. Taylor had no clue what, but after the two weeks of training at the hospital she'd failed to keep control of her emotions and her father had found out about the 'reunion' with Emma. That had led to calling Alan, who hadn't explained much but had at least apologized for Emma's actions, but unfortunately they'd missed the deadline for Taylor to accept a position at Arcadia this year. Or, likely, in general, as transfers were even less common. Not that she was even sure that a vocational school was the right path for her as it was.
Despite the problems from visiting the Barnes household on Monday, Taylor still pulled herself together on Wednesday and made sure that she made it to Brockton General with plenty of time to spare for her afternoon evaluation run. When she'd arrived they'd had her change into a set of basic nurse's scrubs, given her a new ID tag that very clearly stated she was an intern, and stuck her in a break room with a disorganized stack of basic patient records. She was told to order them for visiting, in whatever order made sense to her, and she'd ended up sorting them by floor first. Then each of the four floors was sorted to be a single loop aiming towards the 'most severe' case on each floor, but still checking in on those that they'd come to first. She then ordered the four floors in a line on the room's table, but had split out pediatrics and decided to ask whoever was going to be doing the run if they'd like to start or end there before assembling the final ordering.
A few paperclips then let her group each of the five stacks into bundles which would allow for more easily swapping entire floors out from the clipboard's storage compartment. There were also several pens and a number of blank sheets of paper already in there.
Half an hour later she was surprised when the door opened and New Wave's newest member Panacea came in. The girl was supposedly able to heal any injury.
"Hello," the girl said, looking Taylor over. "Taylor Hebert?"
"Yes," Taylor replied.
"I'm told that you're the intern helping me today."
"Er, I guess?"
"I don't know why they aren't warning any of you about that." She then gestured at the table. "Are you still working on sorting my patient list for the afternoon?"
"I, er, no, I'm basically done, but I wanted to know if you wanted to start or end with pediatrics before setting the floor order."
"Oh. I think you're the first person to ask me that kind of thing in general. Hmmm. Let's end with them today."
Nodding, Taylor quickly stacked the five floor packets to have pediatrics at the end and placed all but the first floor to visit inside of the clipboard. The last stack was attached to the top of the clipboard, the paperclip removed and left on a small magnet at the top of the clipboard that was labeled for a pen. The plastic pens provided weren't exactly going to stick there though.
"At least you're more efficient than yesterday's intern," Panacea said. "Would you prefer to be addressed as Taylor or Miss Hebert?"
"Either is fine," Taylor replied.
"Then I think I'll stay informal. You should probably stick to calling me Panacea in front of patients, but I'm not really used to responding to that. If I don't react then call me Amy to get my attention. Otherwise, you've got the patient list, so lead the way."
Leading the way for Panacea was...weird, but Taylor was the one with the clipboard of patients. That said, after checking where they were going she offered the first patient's sheet to Panacea so that she'd be more prepared. That seemed to be appreciated as they reached the elevator, though the other girl had finished the quick look and handed the sheet back by the time the elevator had arrived.
"I'm not sure why the administration thinks I need an 'assistant' my own age," Panacea said once they were on the elevator. "But at least you're not fawning over me."
Taylor wasn't sure how to take that, and instead focused on what she was there to do.
By the end of the afternoon Taylor had learned several things. The first was that the hospital probably wanted Panacea to have an assistant because the girl was horrible with the paperwork side of things. It generally took five follow-up questions to finish getting the necessary portions of each patient's paperwork completed to the level that had been specified in the training sessions, though that did improve to only two or three by the end of the day. None of that had come across as a 'test', but rather more as though Panacea just didn't know how to translate what she did into the terminology for the paperwork.
Next on the list was that at least half of the people Panacea was helping were entitled assholes, and Taylor had enough of that by the end of the first floor. Lecturing, almost yelling, at two patients felt like it should've had her escorted out immediately, but Panacea had bragged about it to the nurse when they'd finished the floor. That led to getting ahead of a couple of obvious problem patients on the second floor, and even threatening to have Panacea move on and possibly get back to a patient on the third floor 'sometime next week'.
That trend extended to the parents of children in pediatrics, but not to the children themselves, and Taylor had taken it upon herself to be a distraction for a couple of parents while their children were being healed. Panacea didn't need the stress of dealing with the entitled assholes that were annoyed that it had 'taken so long' when she was already volunteering her time to heal as it was.
Halfway through the afternoon the reason for a focus on breaks from training became obvious, as did another reason why Panacea seemed to need an assistant. The girl had no desire to take a break when she was supposed to and had to be all but dragged to one of the break rooms, arguing that the couple of minutes between the first two floors had been 'enough of a break' already. That had been specifically called out as unacceptable during training and Panacea had pouted when Taylor had insisted on the proper break.
The last big lesson of the afternoon had come at the end of the day and was mostly in hindsight while waiting for the bus. There had been far more stab wounds than she'd expected, and far fewer bullet wounds. Perhaps most of the lower-level gang violence was done with knives instead of guns, possibly because knives were less likely to draw attention from a distance. The next most common issue had been drug-related, and Panacea was incredibly sarcastic with the adults that had obviously been partaking and downright nasty to the one parent who had mentioned that their kid had gotten into their stash.
Still, as she changed out of the provided nurse's scrubs, Taylor thought that the afternoon had gone reasonably well and that she had a better chance of being kept on for the rest of the summer.
Amy shook her head as she looked over the paperwork on Friday. Anna and Kristin had made too many mistakes before fawning over her Monday and Tuesday. Useless gossip hounds that had already posted too much about their afternoons online, even. Jennifer hadn't even gotten a chance yesterday, though they still weren't sure if that was the girl's fault or if it had been an actual accident that she'd ended up high before arriving at the hospital. In either case, she'd been disqualified before even being asked to change into scrubs and had actually needed to be added to the patient list as she was suffering from a mild overdose.
That left Wednesday's Taylor as literally the only candidate intern in the entire group, and she'd honestly been a lot nicer to work with than the nurses generally were. Having the girl step in to tell off the more annoying patients, or even the parents of some of the kids, had also been unusually pleasant and wasn't something the nurses generally did. Hell, the girl had even correctly grasped a critical nuance without prompting, not to threaten to withhold healing from a kid because their parent was being an asshole.
Being persistent about the annoying paperwork, and managing to fill it in to the satisfaction of the nurses without being annoyed at Amy's lack of ability to properly describe things with medical terminology, had unfortunately been another plus. Forcing her to take her break, something that Anna and Kristin hadn't done, was annoying but part of the job duties and couldn't be argued as a problem. Even questioning if Amy wanted to start or end in pediatrics had been appreciated.
On the flipside of things, having a candidate meant that they'd want to continue the program, and that would have all the hospitals in the city turning her away outside of emergencies if her current 'assistant' wasn't present because this was a joint attempt at 'making her life easier'. Which would mean that for at least the rest of the summer, it would be impossible to sneak out and do extra healing on her own...and if they could convince Taylor to stay on past that as a full employee then it would likely continue into the next couple of years at a minimum. All other reasoning aside, that felt like the primary goal of the hospitals as this whole dance had started the Monday after her first late-night visit to a hospital.
Avoiding that by claiming that the girl had been a reject for any of the criteria provided would mean blatantly lying though. Even being a little younger wasn't a problem, and she'd passed every test the hospital had put forth. Amy honestly wouldn't mind working with her more in a general sense. The only real issue she had with the entire thing was that she'd be restricted to scheduled healing times instead of helping more people with additional hospital visits. Sure, they'd almost certainly still let her pass through the emergency room patients, but would then send her right back home and make the entire trip feel like a waste of time.
Sighing, she signed off that Taylor had been acceptable and that the program could continue. She didn't care that Carol would approve, honestly being more concerned with her own conscience. That Sarah and Vicky would approve was another factor, of course, and it was always possible that Taylor would screw up in the coming weeks as she was exposed to other hospitals in town and end the whole ordeal anyway.
It would've been nice if Vicky had even been willing to try to play 'assistant', but it was very hard to argue that anyone else in New Wave wouldn't be wasting their time with it when they could be spending their 'hero time' helping with the gangs. Besides, Vicky had already demonstrated that she didn't have the patience needed.
Taylor hadn't been too surprised when they'd gotten a call Friday afternoon to schedule her for the following week. In fact, the primary shock had been that Brockton General was only a single day a week and she would need to visit four other hospitals as well. Knowing that she was working with Panacea meant that it made sense to spread things out a bit, and some quick checks in the phone book after the phone call revealed that even consolidating patients across hospitals would still probably need at least three different hospitals due to differing ownership.
Looking that up wouldn't have been a priority, but she'd needed to check where the hospitals for the coming week were anyway as well as which groups they were in. The latter was because some scrubs and ID cards for each hospital group had been promised to be delivered the next day, along with a printed copy of her schedule for the week, and she needed to know which group each hospital was in so that she'd know which ID card would be needed each day.
Her father had already known about things when he came home, but had been grimacing about something. No explanations were forthcoming, but he'd told her that she'd have to use her best judgement for some reason.
When the doorbell rang the next morning, a mere ten minutes after her father had left to go shopping, Taylor was expecting someone going door to door. No vehicles had pulled up to the house or into the driveway when she'd taken a quick look out the window, at least. Answering the door to find Lady Photon standing there with a box was not what she'd expected.
"Miss Hebert?" Lady Photon asked.
"Er, yes," Taylor replied.
"I've got the things you'll need for the coming week here."
"Oh. I kind of expected a delivery company, or maybe one of the hospital staff..."
"New Wave is obviously heavily involved, and technically your paychecks are coming from an account under our control that the hospitals are contributing funds to. That saves them from the headache of consolidating funds to a single hospital group. I also wanted to meet you, given that you obviously impressed Amy."
"I was just doing my job."
"Which is more than could be said about the others. May I come in?"
"Er, yes."
They moved into the living room, with the box placed down on the coffee table, and Lady Photon had quickly gone through the box's contents with her. Three sets of scrubs, the ID cards and a slip of paper with a common PIN for them because some of the hospitals required both card and PIN for some doors, a pair of non-slip shoes, a bag for bringing a change of clothing to and from the hospitals in, and a book of medical terms. More than expected, though the additions were welcome ones.
"New Wave picked up the shoes and bag," Lady Photon explained. "But the nurses at Brockton General threw the book in. I think they're hoping that you're willing to translate Amy's terms into proper terms. You supposedly 'did better than expected' on Wednesday, but then they have to translate your terminology instead of Amy's."
"I figured that was one of the big reasons they wanted her to have an assistant," Taylor admitted.
"They...never actually told us what the reasoning was. It was a fairly sudden proposal from our point of view, though with decent arguments all around, though we weren't sure that they'd be able to find anyone that the hospital staff and Amy would approve of." She then paused, and sighed. "There's also a...slightly more controversial item."
"Controversial how?"
"I visited your father at work yesterday to enquire about either providing a stipend towards your existing cell phone or providing you with one for your safety as you're traveling to the various hospitals. He explained that there were recent issues regarding them though."
Taylor grimaced. "Yeah. My mother..."
"Was on the phone in the car."
"Yeah."
"As I explained to your father yesterday, using a tool in the wrong circumstances doesn't mean that the tool shouldn't be used in the right ones. You could just as easily argue that it was the car, and not the cell phone, that was at fault." She raised her hand. "I understand that emotions aren't that logical. I wouldn't be bringing it up now if I didn't personally feel that the benefits of being able to stay in communication with your father and call for help if something goes wrong are far more important overall."
That...was unfortunately hard to argue in a general sense. Using a phone while driving was a very different situation to using one at, well, basically any other time. They hadn't exactly unofficially banned phones in general from the house...and the arguments presented were part of why her mother had a cell phone to begin with. Ugh. Now it almost felt like refusing to carry one would be going against her mother's wishes.
"Just for emergency use?" she finally said.
Lady Photon shrugged. "The intent would be for emergency use and so that your father could check in with you, but it wouldn't be limited to that. It would also allow you to check in with him without needing to find a payphone and would make coordinating your schedule with Amy a bit easier as well."
Her father's annoyance last night was almost certainly because he was annoyed with the arguments making far too much sense as well. Sighing, she nodded. "Okay."
"I'll check with your father to see how he'd like to go. Most major providers allow for 'someone else can contribute to the bill' setups if he'd like to go that route and then we'd just need to know your new phone number."
She nodded, but frowned as she considered that. "That feels a little...lax? Shouldn't more than the phone number be needed?"
"I suspect the entire system was set up for trivial subsidizing of a Ward's phone with a minimal paper trail and was opened up to more than just the PRT to allow them to hide their 'needles' in the haystack of general use."
"Oh."
"Do you have any other questions for me before I go?"
Taylor was about to say no, before she flinched. "You're literally about to go meet up with my father, aren't you."
"...yes, though I'm impressed that you figured that out."
"You obviously knew he wasn't home as you've not asked where he was at all and didn't ask if he'd be back soon to talk to him about cell phones."
"Ah. Yeah, I suppose I was a little obvious there."
It hadn't been too surprising when her father had returned home with two cell phones. They already had each other's numbers programmed into them, and the one handed to Taylor had a lot more than that. Two numbers for every hospital in the city, all of New Wave's numbers, and a set of local non-emergency contact numbers. Police, fire, PRT, and Protectorate specifically. A helpful guide as to what kinds of issues to call each of those numbers for had been included, that started with a note that in an emergency you should always just call 911 and let them contact everyone that might be needed.
The two of them sat down together to go through setting several things up, including voicemail and security codes on the phones themselves. Taylor even figured out how they could set a custom ringtone for each other so that they'd be able to tell those calls from someone else calling. They'd actually have three ringtones each to start with, as 'in my address book' and 'not in my address book' were able to have different ringtones as well.
He'd ensured that they had four total charging bricks for the phones as well. His second one was going to go to work with him, but he decided that she needed to have one in her bag in case she needed to charge the phone at a hospital. Mention was made that he wasn't 'tempting fate' by having a car charger...on top of the cigarette lighter slot in his car not working anyway. A justification for telling people to not smoke in the car being applied to making it harder to use the cell phone in the car.
Both phones had been set up on their chargers...and notes had been attached to things to remember to grab them and put them in bags when leaving the house.
The week of spending afternoons at different hospitals had gone more smoothly than expected. Taylor arriving early let her sort through the patient lists, though even Brockton General had pre-sorted things when they were back there. Learning the layouts of the other hospitals was the hard part, for 'things are clearly labeled for visitors' definitions of 'hard'. Helpful building maps in the break room she was brought to in each new hospital aided that process. Brockton General was also the only one with patients to be visited spread across multiple floors, outside of the emergency room and pediatrics when the hospital had pediatrics areas.
Seeing more kinds of injuries had been informative, as had ending up in the room taking notes while Panacea helped a mother give birth without needing a cesarean delivery. Two patients hadn't had injuries as much as illnesses as well, something that helped break up some of the monotony of putting people back together. Taylor also ended up removing a lot of bandages and disposing of stitches ejected by Panacea's powers. Pockets full of candies had also been added to the routine, especially when dealing with pediatrics, because basically everyone healed needed to eat something.
Taylor had gotten better at spotting the entitled assholes, and Panacea hadn't fought being dragged off to breaks as much. They'd actually started chatting about random topics during the breaks, though mostly avoided talking about themselves for now...schooling aside, anyway. Amy had complained that she was being pushed towards medical classes that she didn't want to take, which Taylor hadn't said anything about the other benefits of. Explaining what the girl was doing was kind of her job right now. Both had actually complained about where they were going to high school, Taylor not entirely happy with Winslow's reputation and Amy apparently preferring the non-vocational schools in a general sense.
They each had opinions on various places they'd gone to around town, Amy's list including far more 'expensive' options than Taylor could normally afford, and on Friday they'd exchanged a couple of stories from friends of their families. Amy had brought up embarrassing mistakes that New Wave had been involved with while Taylor had shared a story each about the university and the Dockworkers screwing up.
At the end of the day they ended up both waiting on rides. Taylor for the bus, and Amy for Vicky to show up to fly her off.
"I might call you tomorrow," Amy said as they waited.
"Oh?" Taylor replied.
"They're not going to let me do non-emergency healing without you present now, but even without that I might need an excuse to avoid being dragged out on a double-date with Vicky."
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend."
"I don't, and she sees that as a problem to try to correct."
"Ah. That does sound annoying."
"Unfortunately, you're probably the only good excuse I've got to avoid making a fool of myself bowling. I could claim that I want to get to know you better or something so that we work better together, perhaps."
"Ten-pin or candlepin?"
"I didn't ask, but probably ten-pin. Not like I'm good at either. Vicky claims it's a good way to practice controlling her strength, but I think she just likes that she can show off with the heavier balls."
"If she pushes bowling too hard you could probably get out of it by accusing her of being too into fondling balls."
It took a moment before Amy all but choked as the joke's meaning hit her and 'laughing' interfered with 'breathing in'. Taylor couldn't claim proper credit for it, and it probably worked better on guys as the Dockworkers she'd learned it from had done, but it was still a good one.
"Do I want to know what's so funny?" Vicky asked as she landed next to Amy.
"Probably not," Amy admitted, before giggling some more.
Taylor had gotten a call from Amy the next morning, but hadn't expected Vicky to tag along. It made sense in hindsight, as Amy was the kind of parahuman that gangs and even governments would love to forcibly recruit and a bodyguard of sorts was useful. That idiots had needed punching out just made that a bit more obvious, though they'd at least had the sense to distract Vicky first. Grabbing Taylor to shove her out of the way had been a poor choice though, putting her nearly in a perfect position to kick the man in the crotch. She'd failed to dodge his head coming down properly though and got hit in the face, leading to a bloody nose.
Vicky had managed to overcome her distraction at that point and had stepped in to finish the rest off, while Amy had shied away from the fighting itself.
"Would you like me to heal that?" Amy asked while Vicky was calling someone to pick up the group.
"I'd appreciate it," Taylor replied, though it was likely muffled quite a bit by her trying to hold her nose to keep it from bleeding more without making it hurt more.
Already knowing that it wasn't a 'touch and the injury is instantly gone' thing, Taylor held her hand out and let Amy take the couple of minutes it took to get things right. It was a weird feeling in some ways, her nose just kind of pulling itself back together as the pain vanished. At the same time, it left her hungry, which was to be expected when she'd lost blood and had needed to have her reserves tapped a little to heal her nose.
"That should do it," Amy said, though didn't let go until after Taylor had released her nose and the bleeding had indeed stopped. "I can't do much about the blood that got all over your shirt though."
"We'll just have to pick her up a new outfit," Vicky chimed in. "A new shirt won't go well with those jeans anyway, and the blood is because she was defending you."
Amy sighed. "Figures you'd find a way to get us to shop for clothing."
"I promise that it'll just be a quick stop. Maybe two outfits if the shirts and pants can be swapped to give her more options?"
To Amy's apparent surprise, it had been a quick stop...but Taylor had left with four outfits instead of one. It was hard to blame that on Vicky though, as the owner of the store had been healed by Amy on Tuesday and Taylor had to argue the man down to only 'buy one, get one free'.
By the end of the summer it was known in a general sense that Panacea had a dedicated assistant, but nobody had dug into who that assistant was. Taylor had only gone out in public with Amy a couple of times, but they'd spent time at each other's houses for various reasons as well. Things had gone reasonably well overall, but one unexpected problem was that Taylor looked too much like an actual nurse and that had caused confusion with doctors a couple of times.
This had led to a meeting about making the summer internship into a proper non-intern position.
"We'd like to have Taylor continue working with Amy," Carol said. "With the concerns that come with underage employment during the school year, of course. Three hours a day if visiting a hospital after school, but we expect that to be three days a week to allow for longer potential weekend visits without running afoul of the underage labor laws for Taylor."
"You're probably more concerned with keeping me under the limits before we have to get into 'the hospitals say they have to start paying me' leading to 'making a profit with your powers' legal headaches," Amy pointed out.
"...that is also a consideration, yes. They say that they expect the difference in the permitted times to more than cover you handling the emergency room patients where Taylor still won't be joining you."
Amy sighed at that, but nodded. Her feeling...pressured, perhaps, to heal as many people as possible had come up recently. It felt like New Wave's adults wanted to ensure that she didn't get into the habit of pushing herself too hard.
Taylor looked over to her father, who shrugged. "I don't have a problem with Taylor continuing to have a part-time job, so long as it doesn't affect her grades."
"We suspect Amy's grades are more likely to suffer," Sarah pointed out. "Everyone has commented that Taylor is quite intelligent and unfortunately Winslow isn't likely to properly challenge her."
"In which case I'll leave it up to her."
"There is one other concern though, before she makes a decision either way. While she's done well, the few incidents with doctors mistaking her for a proper nurse have led to a request that her uniform be changed. We'd like her to still be seen as a nurse to the general public, but perhaps more of a television nurse instead of an actual one."
Pictures were pulled out of a folder and handed to Taylor and her father, depicting what looked a lot like a halloween costume version of a nurse outfit. While it would look close to being a dress, it was obviously a shirt and skirt combo in white with red trim. It even had the traditional little hat with a cross on it. At the same time, it was...far less revealing than similar halloween costumes would probably be, had some practical elements included such as a pouch for carrying things like candies, and had a sensible pair of matching sneakers instead of heels. She'd be showing off her legs more than she was used to, admittedly, but it would definitely make it obvious to the doctors that she wasn't an actual nurse.
Besides, it wasn't like Amy dressed like a doctor. Standing out from the normal staff was obviously a good thing when harried doctors were running around. It would just take some adjustment to get used to it, and it wasn't like they were going for a full 'hugs all your curves' or 'incredibly poofy for show' style outfit.
"I think I could handle that," she finally said, wondering if the gloves pictured were intended to make it easier to interact with Amy without her power activating.
"We'll see about ordering a couple to start with then," Sarah said.
Taylor had known that she wasn't necessarily going to enjoy attending Winslow after Emma had turned on her, but she'd not expected to be ganged up on basically immediately either. That said, Emma's barbs hurt less than expected, being more of a problem because they were coming from Emma than in general...and some of them just weren't accurate after spending weeks playing 'intern' and now having a proper job working with Amy.
It was honestly harder to hold back from punching out Hess and Clements for their bullshit. The teachers and administration were willing to take the track star's side over her own...up until the first case of stolen homework. They'd come down hard on the trio for that one, though probably only because Principal Blackwell was one of the few in the school aware of Taylor having an important part-time job. Supposedly the details of said job weren't included though, just that keeping Taylor from it had to be cleared in advance. That was primarily to ensure that the school could shift detentions appropriately, not that she thought that would be a factor with the hours she was working.
Winslow was not a 'stay after for two hours' kind of school. The staff wanted to be out of the building a lot sooner than that.
Venting at Amy about things had happened though. Without full details, admittedly. The incident had also convinced the Trio of bullies that stealing from her in general wasn't worth the risk of getting caught again, though that just led to them shifting to other tactics.
Amy shook her head as she headed for Taylor's 'office', Brockton General having dedicated an unused doctor's office for her use. Well, technically their use, but Taylor did the patient sorting and used the small attached bathroom to change there. Throwing on the robes that served as a costume didn't really compare. It was mildly annoying that healing time was still limited by Taylor being too young to work longer hours during the school year, though not being able to do anything about it had proven to be somewhat freeing in its own way.
Not being able to heal everyone because outside forces wouldn't let her was more personally acceptable to her, apparently. At least compared to it being her choice in some fashion.
She had to steel herself a little though, because you wouldn't think that the 'nurse' in the office was the same Taylor you saw outside of the hospitals. It had taken seeing the younger girl in the outfit to realize that she had the potential to be highly attractive with minimal effort...and probably a little more weight, admittedly. The public seemed to agree, given that in the past three months PHO had labeled Taylor as being a 'hot nurse'. Or at least those who had been healed with Taylor in the room, because there weren't any pictures online. In Amy's phone, yes, but not online.
"There you are," Taylor said as Amy entered the room. "About time you got up here."
"They had me start with a pair of severe drug overdoses," Amy replied.
"Ah. Probably from the bust that went wrong for the half-dozen police officers we'll be starting with today. Then we can work our way down to pediatrics, where Katie is back with another broken bone."
That girl was far too fond of getting into fights over people mistreating her younger brother. "We'd probably be starting there if not for the police officers, right?"
"Yeah. Though I think you should consider doing more with them and the group of obvious gang members at the end of the run."
Amy blinked at that. "What do you mean by doing more?"
"We both know you're forcing your powers to heal instead of that being what they seem to want you to do. You've ranted about it a couple of times, and that New Wave keeps pushing the 'is only a healer' lie."
"So?"
Taylor rolled her eyes and held her hands up to do air quotes. "So a 'deeper check' of the police officers and 'find' minor stress injuries that would normally be missed while you boost their strength and flexibility a little. Instead of pulling from the fat reserves of the gang members, pull from their muscle. Maybe even 'realize' that Katie's bones are weaker than they should be and 'fix' it. Reasonable explanations for why you went above and beyond for some, and we just don't mention what you did for the others."
Her first instinct was to reject the idea immediately, but at this point she respected Taylor a bit too much for that. Giving it more serious consideration, she realized that the 'help those protecting others' side of things made a lot of sense. It also appealed to her from the point of view of just figuring out if she could pull it off without anyone calling her out on it.
She ended up giving into temptation, first with the police officers. Taylor's ready-made excuse even proved to be surprisingly accurate, as there were a number of minor repetitive stress items that could be taken care of and it wasn't too much harder to go a little further to make the officers just a little more effective. Pulling material from the muscles of the obvious gang members for their healing was also reasonably straightforward, and shouldn't be immediately noticeable as she wasn't targeting the heart or lungs.
Katie was the obvious potential problem there, as if anything her bones were already stronger than normal. But deciding that her tendons weren't flexible enough was possibly accurate on its own.
Within a couple of weeks it had almost become a game, figuring out how to do more for those doing good and how to subtly hinder those causing problems. Or were just plain annoying, if in other ways. Amy had even started tweaking the most annoying women to ensure that fat would go to all the 'wrong' places even as she used the existing fat in the 'right' places to heal their injuries.
Summer break had brought with it more hours in the hospital with Amy, and Taylor was honestly surprised that nobody had pictures of her in her nurse outfit yet. Not wearing it outside of the various hospitals obviously helped, but she'd expected someone to have snuck a picture and posted it online. Or even that someone would've wanted official press photos of some kind for one of the several articles that had come out about her in the papers.
There were lots of descriptions of her, mostly from teenagers that had been healed, but no pictures. Being consistently described as attractive on PHO easily balanced out being insulted all the time at school, and Emma seemed confused as to why her insults just weren't all that effective.
Speaking of school, the summer break meant no dealing with the bullying at school. It was possible that New Wave could've pulled strings to get a transfer to Arcadia, but that would put her in the spotlight in ways she wasn't sure she was comfortable with and the vocational training Arcadia did could create issues for working with Amy.
It was hard to tell if Amy wasn't doing well with medical terminology out of spite or if her powers just refused to let her think of things in the terms humans did, but Taylor's studying of a couple of books had made her much better at just translating what Amy described into what the doctors and nurses wanted to see. That studying also kept giving her ideas for how they could report their game of subtly affecting those being healed to improve or hinder them in ways that wouldn't be obviously panic-causing bio-manipulation. This was, of course, mostly on the 'improve' side, because Amy had gotten very good at non-obvious 'hinder'.
There was even a rumor that her powers had 'issues' with current beauty standards and repeated exposure was capable of stripping away attractive features. That the only people running into those problems were gang members and those giving off an overly-entitled attitude hadn't been noticed. Taylor occasionally fantasized about Emma coming in needing healing, but figured that it was for the best that she didn't. That would spread her identity basically immediately.
Outside of the hospitals, Taylor and Amy had started spending more time together as well. This included Amy staying over a number of nights, though never Taylor staying over at the Dallon household. Amy wanted time away from Carol, after all. A couple of notebooks full of ideas had come out of those visits, most of which hadn't been implemented yet. Two stray cats had been turned into 'guard cats' though, and had successfully driven off at least one person looking for unlocked windows.
Taylor...wasn't as open as she could've been with Amy though, Emma's betrayal and regular use of confided information against her in taunting keeping things more private. Amy seemed to understand that though, and very likely had her own secrets that hadn't been shared as well.
One of the bigger projects was actually convincing the girl that the world was not 'black and white' though, and instead was almost entirely shades of gray. It was a fact of life in general, and trying to slot everything into 'good' and 'evil' was never going to work. That Carol seemed to hold a similar view of the world at least explained where Amy had picked up the stupid idea though, and the first breakthrough only came about through pointing out that Amy was copying her adoptive mother's worldview.
Amy felt that her powers were happier with her since Taylor had first suggested the 'tilt the balance' healing actions. Not entirely happy, but they fought her a lot less on normal healing when she was regularly improving and hindering people. Her most subtle project was actually Taylor herself though, gradually tweaking her friend's body so that as she grew she was stronger and more attractive without leaving any sign that it wasn't natural.
That she was regularly doing 'quick touch-ups' to get rid of bruising obtained from the bullying at Winslow just made it easier to hide the other changes. The only obvious change was making it so that Taylor no longer needed glasses, something that she'd also taken care of in Danny and a number of others. Of course, that seemed to be easier because she'd also figured out how to subtly weaken eyes so that glasses would be needed in gang members.
Really, her powers seemed to be far more willing to do fiddly little bits of healing like that without 'complaint' when she'd started doing the exact opposite to gang members every so often.
What she hadn't been able to do was bring herself to admit to anyone else that she'd developed a crush on Taylor. Not the same kind of attraction that she still held for Vicky, but she'd also come to realize that her adoptive sister was never going to reciprocate that attraction naturally.
Telling Taylor about that forbidden crush after healing the aftermath of a 'welcome back to school' prank had been a mistake, but it had probably been that or creating possible legal issues by admitting that she'd found out that one of the bullies was now a Ward. That it had led to Taylor admitting that Vicky was hot, and thus revealing that the younger girl was at least bi-curious, had been an unexpected bonus.
Post-break review was boring, and Vicky was passing the time by coming up with plans to get Amy and Taylor to see what everyone else could. Admittedly, it could be as simple as confronting them about when they were going to start dating, or just acting like they already were and asking them to join her and Dean on a double date, but Aunt Sarah had insisted that the two be allowed to figure things out on their own for now.
Realizing that Amy was attracted to girls, or at least Taylor, had been a little bit of a shock...but nicely explained why the double dates with various guys hadn't gone over well. Whether or not Amy had noticed a decline in pushing for those was harder to tell. Luckily for Amy, Taylor also spent far more time staring at girls in general than she spent admiring boys.
Resisting buying a couples' gift for the two had been difficult, but gifts suitable for 'best friends' were very close and seemed to have worked just fine.
Amy had been 'pouty' this morning due to needing to spend hours in school and then not spending time with Taylor due to a New Wave meeting this afternoon. Not even being let out earlier than most of the school, as Arcadia let them go early as they had 'existing vocations to learn on their own time', didn't even help since Taylor would be stuck in class and couldn't be called or texted.
Vicky was pulled out of her musing by Mr. Smith opening the classroom door. "My apologies for interrupting, but Miss Dallon is needed for an emergency situation."
Sweeping her stuff into her bag only took a moment. "What's up?"
"I was told you need to get your sister to the hospital, but no other details were provided."
Nodding, Vicky detoured to her locker to grab her jacket, knowing Amy would need to do the same, and still made it to the front doors first. She headed outside immediately, pulling out her phone to check for messages that would hopefully tell her which hospital.
T critical @ BG
Fuck. At this point all of New Wave was aware that Winslow had a bullying problem, including that Shadow Stalker was part of said problem, though there was no way it should be bad enough to warrant hospital visits. Of course, the school was also in a horrible state in other ways, so it might've been a building failure of some kind.
Whatever the case, she pocketed her phone and secured her bag better. Amy came out the door a moment later, but obviously didn't expect to be grabbed before she could check her own phone.
"What gives?" Amy asked once she'd recovered from being grabbed, most of which had been nearly fumbling her own bag.
"Taylor's in critical condition."
The change in Amy's mood would probably be downright adorable if not for the current situation. It would be something to consider teasing her about later, after things had settled down...
Sophia hadn't expected their little prank against Hebert to result in the school being evacuated and was concerned that they'd accidentally stepped over a line that was going to cause them serious trouble. She originally thought that it would be their word against Hebert's, and the school only took the weakling's word when theft or academic sabotage were involved. Something that had been kind of obvious in hindsight, honestly, and they'd never actually bothered to try stealing things that weren't assignments from Hebert. The weakling wasn't worth the risk.
Of course, the girl refused to acknowledge her place in the world, which had led to coming up with the plan to force her to do so. Fill the locker with waste collected from restrooms and shove her into it, then feed a rumor that the weakling had decided to do something stupid instead of being the victim of a prank so that the janitor would wander through and let her out. Eventually.
But while Emma and Madison had gone home to check in with their parents, Sophia hadn't seen the point in bothering and had hung back to watch what was happening. An ambulance had shown up earlier, likely to take Hebert away, but then the police had shown up. That seemed to have triggered the school evacuation.
Seeing Blackwell and the janitor being escorted out of the building in handcuffs told her that this was going to be more serious than she'd expected. She toggled her phone into 'airplane mode' and turned it off before slipping away, figuring that being trivially tracked would be a bad thing. Instead of going home, she headed for the Boardwalk, and specifically a pizza place that should have the news on.
Of course, this was Brockton Bay. The shithole high school being evacuated, at least one student dragged off in an ambulance, and staff members being arrested didn't appear to be newsworthy enough to interrupt their previously-scheduled items.
She was getting ready to leave, having finished off the fries she'd ordered to keep the staff from telling her to go away, when she heard the 'breaking news' sound. Fucking finally, now she could find out...
"New Wave has announced that all scheduled healing visits have been suspended because Panacea's assistant was attacked at Winslow high school this morning. Despite Panacea herself having been flown in by Glory Girl, her assistant is still considered to be in critical condition after being rescued from being trapped inside of her locker."
...how utterly fucked they probably were.
She fumbled her phone on, but held the buttons needed to put it into the maintenance menu instead of turning on properly. Looking up the codes needed to wipe the phone as though the provider was resetting it was paying off as she was able to go through that process on her way to her nearest stash. Halfway there the phone was wiped, but she pulled the battery and smashed the phone itself before dropping it in an open dumpster.
Hopefully she'd be able to hit all three larger stashes and get out of town before a proper search for her could even begin. Unfortunately, Emma was going to be on her own for this one, not having any powers useful for slipping away.
Rebecca frowned as she read some of her alerts. Picking up the phone, she punched in a number from memory.
"Piggot," came the greeting as the call was answered.
"This is Costa-Brown," Rebecca said. "What are these alerts covering internal arrests and preparing a reveal packet for Shadow Stalker about?"
"She's violated her parole conditions at least three times we're now aware of. I have an entire department that was covering things up, but this morning she stepped far over every line available to her. Sadly, things hit the news before we were ready and she appears to have run off."
"I don't believe anything has made it to the news here. What exactly happened?"
"Turns out that Panacea's assistant was a classmate and she's been part of a bullying campaign against the girl, culminating in a 'prank' involving shoving the girl in a locker full of waste collected from restrooms. New Wave is on the warpath, the public isn't much better since New Wave already announced that Panacea won't be doing non-emergency healing until her assistant recovers, and the city is down a high school for the time being due to health concerns. I believe they're also up to six arrests of school staff as of the last update I got. The other two primary instigators of the 'prank' have already been taken into custody and their phones have text message logs discussing it, both showing that Hess did bulk of the dirty work."
...it was incredibly annoying when a pet project, even one as small as the apparent-idiot girl, managed to go wrong. This wasn't even a 'minor hiccup' wrong. How in the world had the girl managed to screw up that significantly? But it would be political suicide to protect her now. "I see. Do you have any leads as to where Shadow Stalker has gone?"
"No. Her cell phone was turned off shortly after the school was evacuated and her school things were found dumped out on a rooftop where we assume she had hidden a stash of supplies. None of her trackable equipment is missing, and she doesn't seem to have seen anything at home as worth risking showing up to grab."
The girl was smart in all the annoying ways, apparently. "Which nicely explains you wanting to put out an alert that she's armed, potentially dangerous, and wanted for crimes. I'll get someone to start on obtaining a proper warrant."
"That would be appreciated."
I couldn't decide what a ping off of Amy would grant Taylor, beyond that Taylor's base range would be halved by the ping.
The ability to modify her insects herself? Only when in physical contact with them, of course.
Or possibly she can designate a pair of insects as 'relays' for Amy. When Amy is touching one she can apply her power to whatever living thing the other has landed on, converting the striker power into a ranged one while in Taylor's vicinity.
Perhaps being able to push a 'charge' into an insect she's in contact with. Such an insect could, when in contact with living things that aren't Taylor or insects under her control, use a slower version of Amy's power that consumes the charge. To make big changes she'd need to charge a large number of insects, and the charge would fade over time. Plus, the ability only works while she's not in contact with the charged insect(s).
You know, I've discovered a downside of reading your beta document.
I get excited seeing a new post, only to remember I've already read it! The Horror!
Regardless, I like the set up. Making Taylor and Amy friends is always something I enjoy, and its great seeing a huge divergence from relatively tiny alterations.
Well, since Taylor got Amy to do more than just healing, Shaper probably likes Taylor, and would make sure that Taylor got something good ... and possibly the ability to work on Amy, in addition to whatever other powers Taylor winds up with.
Possibly self-biomancy, plus biomancy for the creatures Administrator gives Taylor control over. Maybe something like ... what's the alt-Taylor fic I'm thinking of ... Legion?
And possibly automatic control over creatures Taylor creates, even those that wouldn't normally count for the control aura.
Possibly toss in a Changer form similar to the Queen of Blades.
