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My Random Fiction Bits and Pieces

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All these questions and more will be answered in future episodes, coming soon to a forum near you!

Likely this one!

It's near you, right?
 
Hmm... I wonder how many Case 53s count as 'close enough' for QA to be convinced to work with them? The power Taylor has access to can do worms... can it do snails or slugs? Perhaps one rather large one called Gregor?
 
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I was hoping for reactions from either the PRT or PHO, but not yet. Which means more is coming? *looks hopeful*

Normally this amount of cover-up would result from the PRT being involved, but would they let Shadow Stalker keep running rampant? Piggot isn't one to keep throwing money at a problem without trying to control it, unless this is coming from PRT HQ. And if they knew Sophia is this out of control she would be in Alexandria's tender care... unless this is one of Contessa's BS path schemes.
 
Considering this has gone beyond city level and has Federal Agencies and state agencies apart of it with Governors and directors/senior managers involved. If all of them get taken out in weird ways it would set off too many alarms bells for cauldron to block off.
 
Hmm. Has Taylor got Amy's scent?

What would Amy do if a knocking on her bedroom window turns-out to be a drider-girl flying on dragonfly wings???
 
Yay! More Vespa!
I'm looking forward to seeing a PHO and/or a PRT chapter for this.
 
The idea of Taylor being a literal "social butterfly" is hilarious.
She needs to start a YouTube channel as a as a gigantic (monarch?) butterfly.
Primary topic could be demonstrating various native insects/arachnids/crustaceans and cheerfully explaining how utterly terrifying they can be.
Which also serves the purpose of every villain (with at least a little common sense... So very few...) who knows her videos running away screaming whenever she pops up.
 
I was wondering, just what bugs might be about in BB? This is an article on (USA) Winter Bugs... Wikipedia on Insect winter ecology also looked fun...

Also. Crabs. Flying around on insect wings. Might they be highly bullet resistant?

Fiddler crabs? How much strength could Taylor exert with a giant claw???

Past a certain point, is Taylor going to need a (heated?) backpack for useful bugs, so she can use, mix/match, their shapes?
 
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So. If (let's not kid ourselves, there is no if) Vespa is growing, we may be able to count that as a low level subconscious biotinker/biostriker ability. It makes sense if Taylor managed a second trigger after entering Ping range of Amy, but before reeling in QA's Primary manifestation. I have seen people suggest that Taylor woke up Post-Trigger while still in the Locker and immediately Second-Triggered (which makes narrative sense, even in canon), so this would just be delaying that a bit. The cause would, of course, be a combination of sensory overload and the fact that the she was probably strapped down at first to prevent her from making her injuries worse. With those factors, Taylor would not necessarily be able to understand that she was out of the Locker. Of course, she would also be delirious from the pain or whatever drugs were pumped into her system to deal with the damage and biowaste.

And yes, I am counting the changer ability as separate from the (not) theoretical biotinker/biostriker ability.
 
Ahh, power shenanigans. I remember watching someone talking about various environmental cycles that happened on Earth, and atmospheric composition was one of them. Turns out when the atmosphere had a higher ratio of oxygen, the world was cooler, and the size of larger insects t species was significantly larger.

While I assume there might be some wiggle room for some growth, if biology was otherwise unaltered, the wasp could be near its cap. Sort of like how land animals can only get so big before the Square-Cube law butt's in to add its own two cents.
 
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Vespa 4... Some monsterization
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    • Oh look! I found some more words down the back of the sofa-sized spider!​

    "That should do it," Taylor remarked to Vespa as she stepped back to admire the results of half an hour's work. Some time after lunch she'd recalled that there was, for some reason, an old fish tank buried in the clutter in the basement. She'd had memories of seeing it years ago when she was looking for something else, and had taken a while to locate it, but when she finally found the thing she was pleased to see it was undamaged if very dirty. There was even a top for it with a light, although the filter thing that was lying inside it looked very broken. Having hauled it up to the kitchen she'd spent a while dumping out all the random detritus inside it then carefully cleaning it thoroughly inside and out, ending up with gleaming glass that looked almost new.

    Having got that part sorted out she'd lined it with a few sheets of newspaper for the moment, put in a couple of small bits of apple and a shallow dish of water, then flown Vespa into it and put the lid on. Once that was done she'd carried it up to her room and put it on her desk. "Right, let's find out what actually happens," she told the hornet, seeing her own face through the glass from the other point of view. She'd decided that now was a good time to check what the result of her separating from her hornet physically was, although she still couldn't work out how to do it mentally. The tank was to make sure that if the link they shared did collapse the hornet wouldn't end up flying madly all around the house and possibly hurt herself, or worse end up outside and freeze to death.

    The weather wasn't enormously cold but it was only barely above freezing right now, which was much too cold for a normal hornet. Taylor had experimented with her merged form in the back porch, which was completely unheated and pretty much just a place for dirty shoes and random garden tools, but crucially only had one small window so no one could see her. She'd discovered that the vastly larger super-hornet body, while it could certainly feel the cold, didn't seem to be particularly badly affected by it, at least in the short term. No more than her human body was, and perhaps a little less.

    It was useful information and probably due to powers weirdness, as was the way she could even fly in that body. Or just breathe. In theory an insect the size of a doberman should simply suffocate under its own mass, but she had no trouble at all. The body, while it looked like a hugely enlarged hornet, clearly had much more fundamental changes going on under the exoskeleton.

    While that was interesting and she wanted to learn more about it, the immediate result was that she was certainly capable of flying around outside even in this weather without any real worries. But the Vespa-sized hornet body wasn't, and she didn't want it getting damages, hence the precaution.

    Satisfied with her work, she waved to herself, then went downstairs to put her boots and coat on. Thus adorned she went outside and closed the door, before walking down to the street. Nothing so far was amiss so she turned towards the east and started walking, carefully monitoring her link with her hornet-self.

    After a hundred yards she smiled. So far so good, nothing seemed at all different.

    At two hundred yards she beamed. All good. Excellent.

    Same at three hundred yards. And four hundred. And five hundred.

    "Huh, the range is better than I expected," she murmured to herself, her hands in her pockets to keep them warm as she trod onwards, counting her paces in her head.

    Six hundred. Seven hundred. Eight.

    She started frowning. That… seemed like a lot.

    Nine hundred. One thousand.

    Stopping she turned and looked back down the street to her house, way down at the far end close to where the intersecting street crossed it. "Interesting," she mumbled under her breath. Turning back to face the way she'd been walking, she carried on, crossing the next road after a quick look both ways. The range kept going up and up, and at just under a mile she stopped again and leaned on a low wall next to the street, thinking. Everything she'd read about Parahuman Master abilities suggested that a range of a couple of hundred yards was considered pretty significant and a quarter of a mile was enormous. She was nearly a mile from Vespa and had no difficulty whatsoever with her connection. And all the bugs she'd been monitoring around the house within a few dozen feet were still in her awareness. Which… didn't make any sense.

    Bracing herself, she very gingerly tried extending her power, which immediately tried to slam the full weight of itself into the open. Gritting her teeth she forced it back hard. 'No! Stop that. We've spoken about this before. Play nice or I'll be very upset,' she told it firmly, getting a sort of petulant irritation from somewhere. 'This is a test. This is only a test. Please remain calm.'

    She giggled to herself at the sort of incredulous sensation that came to her. Very slowly and focusing hard, she pushed her ability outwards back in the direction of the house, trying to keep it as narrowly-aimed as possible. Insect after insect came into her purview, in a line stretching back along the street. She found that she could sense them nearly three quarters of the distance without any trouble, although her ability was definitely chafing under the restrictions she was putting on it. However eventually she hit a point where she couldn't seem to get it to go any further, even though she somehow got the impression that it might be possible to push it past that if she could just figure out how.

    "OK," she muttered, "Let's call that the range for now. More than I expected. So… why can I…?"

    Realizing something, she withdrew her senses back to herself and the nearby environs, then repeated the exercise, but starting at the Vespa end.

    And sure enough, it did exactly the same thing in the other direction…

    "Oh my god," she breathed in shock. "Is that supposed to happen?"

    Her power, somehow, seemed nearly as surprised as she was. Which implied the answer was 'No'.

    Leaving the narrow tunnel of bug senses stretching three quarters of a mile from her house towards her, she tried to do the same thing in the other direction at the same time, which gave her an odd sensation of dizziness for a second or two then snapped into place. And within moments she was sensing the same bugs from opposite directions across a big chunk of the shared distance. "Holy crap."

    Her voice was both incredulous and pleased. The results were not what she'd expected at all.

    Keeping the narrowly focused tendril of her power going despite the power itself hopping up and down wanting to expand it in all directions, she resumed walking in as straight a line as she could manage. The overlapping area slowly diminished until finally she felt both sets of senses separate. But the link to Vesta didn't change one iota. It was as seamless as when the hornet body was sitting on her neck.

    Wondering rather desperately if it even had a range she looked around, then headed to the nearest bus stop. This required further experimentation.

    Jumping on the bus when it arrived a few minutes later, this route being one that would end up on the far side of the business district with stops every couple of blocks, she paid the driver and moved to the back, taking a seat next to the heater. The bus was mostly empty due to the hour, being too late for the morning commuters and too early for their return, but there were still a dozen or so people on board. Mostly at the front with a couple nearer to her. No one paid her any attention at all.

    The bus pulled away and rumbled off down the street while Taylor kept a keen internal eye on what was happening. She'd pulled her awareness of arthropods back to a sixty or so foot radius around both her human body and the hornet one to minimize distractions and was simply watching to see what happened to the link to Vespa. As the minutes ticked by, the answer to that seemed to stay absolutely nothing. By the time she reached the other end of the Boardwalk where she got off to find a snack to eat as she was hungry again now, she'd come to the conclusion that distance as far as that particular link went might well be functionally irrelevant.

    'It might not work over tens or hundreds of miles, but I'm nearly six miles from home now and I can't see any difference at all,' she thought as she paid for her burger and fries, then went to sit down near the window. 'Which implies I can probably reach anywhere in the entire city at least. Which is nuts. I wonder why that part of this works over such a big distance but the other part is only about three quarters of a mile. Although that's still pretty impressive…'

    She slowly ate some fries, mulling over her results. By the looks of it, her connection with Vespa was so strong that her power was acting like both the hornet body and her human one were interchangeable as far as her arthropod ability went. That led her inevitably to the thought of whether she could pull of the same trick with other insects. If that was possible, she could in theory spread them around the place like cell towers and cover the entire damned city with her ability!

    Taylor felt somewhat faint. It was an insane idea, but it might actually be possible. Assuming she could form a similarly deep bond with something other than Vespa, since she still had no idea how she'd managed that in the first place, and by the feeling of it neither did whatever it was that was still watching her from somewhere inside her head and feeling weirdly disturbed as well as slightly proud.

    Somehow, she was certain she'd broken something quite important about her power. Hopefully she wouldn't get in trouble for doing that.

    The thought made her smile to herself as she picked up her coke and took a sip.

    'I did not expect this,' she mused, taking a bite out of the burger. 'But it's amazingly cool. I can see some really interesting possibilities here… I should make a note.'

    Unfortunately she didn't have a pen or paper, so she just mentally put it down as great success and finished eating. Once she left the burger place, she looked around. Not having Vespa riding on the back of her neck for some reason made her a little twitchy, possibly because she'd become so accustomed to the sensation of tiny claws over the last few days. She hadn't intended to come this far when she'd left the house or she'd have brought her backpack, and a pair of gloves thinking about it. Rubbing her hands together she decided to go home again, so headed back to the correct bus stop. Checking the timetable she saw it would be about fifteen minutes before the bus arrived.

    Deciding it was too cold to stand around outside, she pondered going back to the burger place to stay warm, but after looking around realized she was near a side street she recalled had a bookshop she'd been to a few times on it. So she headed that way, intending to pop in and look around to kill time in the warmth.

    As she walked towards the bookshop, she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes fixed on a shop on the other side of the street, one she'd never noticed before.

    Brockton Exotic Pets the sign over the window read.

    The slow grin she developed made an older man who was crossing the road towards her suddenly change his mind and go back the other way, looking over his shoulder with a slightly worried face. She ignored that as she checked both directions, then hurried across the street to peer into the window of the shop. Her power told her that there were some absolutely fascinating things in there, and was prodding her and whispering she should go in right now.

    So she did.

    Happily.

    Pulling her hood down as she entered, she looked around with a smile. There were glass tanks all over the place, down both sides of the place and in two aisles in the middle, while at the back of the long thin shop there were cages as well as larger glassed-in enclosures. The entire place was quite warm, heat radiating from quite a lot of the terrariums. In the ones to her left she could see several snakes of various types, some lizards, one of which was watching her in a friendly manner, and a few rodents. Walking down the row, she examined the contents of the terrariums with interest. The snakes didn't react much when she peered in, a forked tongue flicking being about the only motion, but the lizards were moving about. She paused to peer at the blueish one that looked very alert and interested, smiling when it bobbed its head a couple of times and seemed to grin at her with reptilian good humor. Nodding back, she moved on.

    The reptile section was followed by some really impressive aquariums, which were surprisingly warm to the touch, and full of incredibly colorful sea life. Coral, anemones, and brightly shaded fish of all sorts thronged the tanks, which were apparently tropical environments. There were even some jellyfish of various types. To her surprise, several of the creatures she was watching were amenable to her power, which she hadn't expected. The aquatic worms made a little sense, as she'd already noticed that was a thing with terrestrial ones, but how did jellyfish come into it? Or those anemones? They were neither worms nor arthropods.

    It was a little confusing yet again, and she put it on the list of things to look into. She was less surprised to find that the crabs in a couple of tanks were as far as her power went just another sort of bug, which actually made sense this time. Inspecting them she gently probed their tiny little minds, not taking control but just connecting to their own senses for a moment. Yeah, it worked just as well as any other 'bug' did. Neat, but not immediately useful, although she could see some intriguing possibilities down the line. On the other hand, if she needed crabs, there were lots around in the bay, and they didn't need an expensive heated tank like these guys did.

    Eventually she went past the aquatic pets and arrived at the part she'd felt from the street. Arthropods.

    Quite a lot of them, in fact. A fair number of different species of spider, several scorpion varieties, stick insects in multiple sizes from so small they were barely visible to large enough to almost make a good nightclub… Tanks full of crickets and grasshoppers she assumed were food for some of the reptiles in all likelihood. Several different types of mantis were in other terrariums, then there were some enormous beetles, one of which was so big it would have filled her hand.

    Her eyes were wide with glee.

    This was perfect.

    How had she not heard of this place before?

    Even before her powers came along she'd have found it absolutely fascinating, but the addition of her ability ramped that up to infinity and beyond. Looking at the various tanks she couldn't see anything astoundingly dangerous, although she recognized some of the scorpions as pretty venomous and not the sort of thing you'd want to get stung by. The spiders were likewise not particularly lethal. Jumping spiders were just fun, and Tarantulas, according to what she'd learned, could certainly give you a highly unpleasant bite but it wasn't all that dangerous for the most part unless you were very small, very old, or very ill. Or allergic to them which was always a risk factor with any toxin, of course.

    On the other hand they were big and hairy and impressive, so that was nice.

    If she wanted extremely venomous, black widows weren't all that hard to find, apparently. Brockton Bay was technically a little far north for them, and the far more dangerous brown recluse, but they definitely were found here, despite what the official story was, because she'd seen both more than once. Her mom had in fact pointed them out to her in the past and told her in no uncertain terms that they were not amenable to being played with, unlike the wolf spiders the house often hosted. Not being stupid even as a small girl Taylor had listened and stayed clear of the things she was warned off. Everything else was fair game though…

    She smiled fondly at the memory of her mom's face after that firefly incident.

    Moving slowly down the rows of terrariums she thought about their inhabitants. She couldn't really buy much of anything today but at least she now knew this place was here for later when she had more ability to get some fun new friends. She'd need to set up suitable enclosures for them first, though. Looking around she spotted the smaller tanks and equipment and went over to study the prices. They were more than she'd expected, but less than she feared. A lot of the cost seemed to be things like heaters and lights. Wondering if she could find some cheap second hand aquariums similar to the one she'd dug out of the basement which would lower the startup cost, she memorized some prices, wishing she'd brought a pad and pen. After a moment the thought struck her that she could simply ask the guy at the counter, who was talking to a girl about her age, for paper and something to write this all down with, so turned and headed to the front of the store again.

    The pair were apparently finishing up a transaction. Handing the girl a bag, the guy said, "There you go, Lucy. I'm sure your iguana will feel better after you use that. I put in some treats for him too."

    "Thanks, Mike," the girl, who looked Asian, replied with a smile. "This cold weather doesn't agree with him."

    "I'm not surprised," Mike replied, grinning. He looked out the window where it had started almost-snowing again, light quantities of slushy sleet dropping onto the road. "It doesn't agree with me either. Luckily I can stay in here where it's nice and warm."

    Lucy giggled, then turned to leave. She paused, seeing Taylor, before smiling. "Hi. Are you a fellow lizard aficionado?" she queried with interest.

    "I like reptiles, but I'm more into arthropods," Taylor replied cheerfully.

    "Oh, cool." Lucy looked past her to the various tanks of spiders and other creatures. "They're fun too, but lizards are better. An iguana can lie on you and keep you company." She grinned. "Spiders are too small for that."

    Wondering what the other girl would say about her merged spider forms, Taylor just nodded agreeably with hidden amusement. Lucy waved to Mike, smiled at Taylor again and said, "Have fun!," then left, pulling her coat's hood up and dashing across the road.

    "Welcome to Brockton Exotic Pets, miss," Mike said as he turned to her after watching his previous customer leave. "How can I help you? In the market for a fun new companion creature?" He looked and sounded like he was enjoying himself.

    Taylor smiled widely. "Oh, very much so, yes." She started asking questions, after requesting a pen and paper, which he handed over without issue. They spent quite bit longer walking around the store looking at various things than she'd planned on, and by the time she left she had missed two busses, but they ran every thirty five minutes so that wasn't a problem.

    As the bus rumbled homewards, Taylor felt that she'd made a useful new acquaintance, learned some fascinating things, and had a route towards a lot more experimentation that was going to be fun. She hadn't expected what she'd found at all, but it was a lucky accidental discovery.

    Holding the shoebox-sized carton in her lap, most of it being padding and insulation, she let her power play with the inhabitant. All she'd been able to afford, and currently be able to keep safe with what she had at home, but a good start in her opinion.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    "Jesus Christ!" her dad yelped when he came into her room and stopped dead. "Where the hell did you get that thing?"

    She looked up at him, then back at the young female Pandinus imperator that was clinging to her left hand. "Pet shop," she replied, letting her power explore the creature.

    "Pet shop?" he repeated in an incredulous voice. "There are pet shops that sell huge scorpions?"

    "Apparently so," she laughed, spinning her chair around and holding the creature up, which made him take a step back. "She's an Emperor Scorpion. Very popular as pets, I found out."

    "Among crazy people," he muttered, inspecting the large arthropod from a safe distance. "How venomous is it?"

    "Not very," she assured him. "Vespa is much worse."

    "Which doesn't fill me with joy, if I'm honest." He shook his head. "Where on earth did you go?"

    She grinned then explained what she'd been doing that afternoon and her findings and conclusions. He sat on her bed and listened, while the scorpion she still hadn't come up with a name for ran up her arm, across the back of her shoulders, and down the other arm. Taylor was only lightly influencing it at the moment, not wanting to risk such a deep connection as with Vespa until she understood more about what she'd done and how. Even so she knew there was no risk at all from the scorpion. The creature felt mildly curious, if the very limited amount of what it had as a mind could feel much of anything other than hunger. It certainly wasn't upset or worried.

    When she finished he blinked a few times, apparently lost for words, before finally finding some. "Half way across the city?" he exclaimed with incredulity.

    "Yeah. It surprised me too. I didn't think Master powers had anything like that range. Certainly nothing I've read about it showed that. But it works, at least with Vespa." Taylor shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea why, or really what I did. Except that as far as I can work out it wasn't meant to happen that way."

    "Weird," he commented after a long moment. "Very weird."

    She nodded agreement, having thought exactly the same. "And what are you doing with that one?" he asked after a pause, nodding at the scorpion, which she made wave one claw at him in a happy sort of way. This caused him to close his eyes for a second and appear to suppress a sigh.

    "Experimenting," she hissed evilly, rubbing her hands together while the scorpion retreated to her shoulder. Vesta landed on her other one, having been sitting on her head up until now. All three of them regarded him as he looked back with an expression that seemed torn between laughter and mild horror.

    "Oh, lord, this is going to get very strange, isn't it? I can feel it," he groaned helplessly.

    Giggling, she indicated the tank on her desk. "I found that in the basement. Do you mind if I have it?"

    He looked at the thing and shook his head after frowning slightly. "No, help yourself. I wonder where that… Oh. I remember." Her dad nodded. "Someone at the union gave it to your mother about… must be nearly sixteen years ago now. She was thinking of keeping fish for a while but decided in the end it was too much work, and it ended up in the basement. I meant to toss it out years back but it must have got buried under all the other stuff down there and I forgot about it."

    "It was absolutely covered in crud when I found it. It took ages to clean it up," she agreed. "But it's just the right size for this girl." The scorpion waved at him. He just looked back at it with a long-suffering expression. "I've nearly finished setting it up like Mike showed me, so she'll be fine in there."

    "How many tanks full of horrific creepy crawlies can I expect?" he asked somewhat apprehensively.

    "I'm not sure yet," she replied thoughtfully, making him wince. "A few."

    Her dad mumbled "Wonderful," under his breath then stood up. "Fine. It's a hobby, I suppose, and I did make the mistake of suggesting you find something to do. I'll know better next time." She giggled and he grinned slightly. "Oh, I called the hospital earlier like we discussed. Everything set up, they're sending some documents for me to read and sign, and after that we just have to wait and see what happens."

    "Great. That's one less thing to worry about for now," she replied, smiling. "Thanks."

    "My pleasure. I was considering going out for dinner if that's something you'd like to do."

    "Sure. We haven't done that for a long time."

    "Do not bring that thing," he instructed, pointing. "The hornet is bad enough."

    "Aww… She's cute."

    He just looked at her, shook his head, and turned to leave. "Get ready. I'll call and check they've got a table," he said as he left, a faint sigh following his exit and making her laugh again.

    "OK, whatever your name is, I think your home is ready," Taylor told the scorpion on her shoulder. Putting her hand in the tank she ran it down her arm into the glass container, then released her control. The creature stopped, before turning on the spot, apparently inspecting the environment. She could feel it was slightly bewildered by the current situation but not uncomfortable. Putting a large cricket out of the container full of them she'd bought at the same time into the tank, she put the lid back on and made sure it was secure. She also made sure the cricket container was properly secured, as she recalled that time she was a kid…

    Watching the scorpion through the glass she smiled. "Experiment later, eat now," she told it, waving then going downstairs. Shortly she and her father, along with Vespa riding under her hair as usual, were heading into the city and a nice restaurant. Taylor felt in a very good mood overall.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    Frowning, Taylor looked at the ruler in her hand, then at the notebook next to it. "Well. That's… weird."

    She measured Vespa again, nose to tail and across the wings. "You are growing! How the hell is that happening?" The hornet was nearly five percent larger in all dimensions than it had been two days ago when she'd first measured it. Which was, to put it mildly, odd.

    Stepping back she examined the hornet closely. Vespa looked perfectly normal, and from the inside felt the same, but inexplicably had managed to become larger without any of the usual processes an insect used to grow. Never mind the minor fact that hornets, after becoming adults, didn't grow larger in the first place. Yet she was. How? And why?

    Thinking, Taylor flexed the huge scorpion tail hanging behind her idly. She had found that her new pet was just as easy to merge with as anything else had been, and had fiddled around until she'd managed to produce a scorpion variant of a drider, which had made her dad pale and leave the room the first time he'd seen it. In her opinion it was fun and she was quite curious to see how well she could move outside like this, but that could wait for better weather and a suitable location. Scratching the side of her carapace where it itched a little, right at the base of one of the claws folded in front of her, she tried to work out what was going on.

    Eventually an idea, which she smacked her own forehead at the obviousness of once she'd come up with it, crossed her mind. "Damn. That almost makes sense. In a very strange way," the girl muttered. "Powers are completely crazy. Fine, I guess I'll have to test it…"

    Feeling that she was probably on the right path, she unmerged from the scorpion and moved it back into its terrarium. By now the process of using the Changer power was almost routine, and no longer caused any disorientation, which had come as a relief.

    Putting the lid back on, she turned her attention to Vespa. Very carefully repeating the measurements, she wrote them down, before flying the hornet body onto her head while she removed her shirt. Seconds later she was in the super-hornet form, something she'd been practicing with quite a bit in the last few days. The hornet-girl and other variants hadn't been used as much although she thought she probably should try that too. Making a note of the time on the alarm clock next to her bed, she scuttled out of the bedroom and went downstairs to watch TV for a while. She'd found it was a rather odd experience while in this body since the insect vision and brain definitely worked quite differently than a human one did, the much faster reflexes and update rate of the eyes causing strange effects, but she'd managed to get used to it after a while. Watching TV had started out more like a slide show, in fact, but practice had somehow made it work more or less normally although the colors looked off due to the increased spectral range of the hornet eyes.

    Several hours later, having watched a terrible daytime movie, then experimented with whether she could use the fridge while a huge hornet, which turned out to be possible but took a lot of practice, she finally went back upstairs. Unmerging she noted the time again, then got dressed. Finally she measured Vespa once more.

    "AHA! I was right!" Taylor crowed, pleased that she'd found the cause of the anomaly. The hornet was another three percent larger than she'd been three and a half hours ago. Apparently merging and unmerging was having a long-lasting effect on the insect.

    Which led to some intriguing, and possibly worrying, questions, of course.

    What was the upper limit to this? Did it have one? Was it permanent? Was anything other than size changing? What effect would that have on any offspring Vespa had?

    And…

    Was it having a similar effect on Taylor?

    That was something she found a touch concerning when she thought about it, if she was honest.

    She didn't feel any different. Nor, when she undressed and carefully examined herself, did she look any different. There might have been a slight reduction in belly fat, she thought as she prodded her midriff and the slight paunch she'd developed while at Winslow, probably from stress and lack of exercise as much as anything else, but overall it was as likely to be her imagination as it was to be real. Idly resolving to exercise more, she got dressed once more and flopped on her bed, staring at the hornet sitting on her hand.

    "This is very strange indeed," she commented to the insect, watching her lips move through its eyes. Then she giggled. "Although what part of this isn't strange, I guess…"

    Having thought about the conundrum for some time, in the end she shook her head. Without more data she couldn't really come to any proper conclusion, and that meant more experimentation. Which was something she'd been planning on doing anyway, so all it really meant was making sure she documented everything as thoroughly as possible. Deciding to weigh herself more regularly and keep her eyes open for anything changing, she concluded that all she could do for now was carry on as before. Her power didn't appear to be causing any problems for her, hopefully that would continue, and from the feel of it at the back of her mind, it seemed to be reassuring her everything was fine.

    For now she'd trust it. Not like she had much of a choice in any case. When it took the momentary thought as permission to try to expand out across the neighborhood she slapped it hard and scowled. "None of that," she said out loud. "We have an agreement. You do what I tell you, and we learn step by step. Don't make me come in after you or no one's going to be happy."

    Her power seemed to sigh with nearly as much long-suffering tolerance as her dad had sometimes, making her grin.

    "See? It's much easier to simply go along with it. Come on, let's have fun with that idea I had a few days ago, that'll cheer you up."

    Wondering with amusement what anyone overhearing her talking to herself would think, she hopped to her feet and started getting ready for some serious attempts at breaking her power. Which seemed equally enthralled and concerned, if she was really sensing what she thought she was…

    A little later she was down in the basement, where she'd been tidying up, often using one or other drider form for the enhanced strength and because she found it fun. Now almost everything that had been cluttering up the place was piled neatly to one side, over behind the furnace. Her dad's workbench had been tidied as well, all the tools stored under it in the correct places, and she'd brushed the floor too. The end result was a room larger than the living room upstairs, with a lot more usable space, although a slightly lower ceiling. She'd even covered the small low windows on the front of the basement to make sure no one could see in.

    It was a perfect area to play with horrifying insectoid monstrosities, she'd told her dad with a grin. He hadn't disagreed.

    On the workbench were several old jars each with a different creature in. One had a wolf spider, one a docile paper wasp queen, one a house centipede, and there was also a firefly and in the last jar a tiny jumping spider she'd found hiding in the bushes down the street when she was walking past the day before. The little spider was undoubtedly the brightest arthropod she'd so far run into, she could sense curiosity behind those eyes which were watching her. Nothing close to human intelligence, but a lot more than you'd expect from something with a brain the size of a grain of salt.

    Moving Vespa to the bench as well, to keep her out of the way as well as give an external viewpoint, Taylor opened the air vent a little and poked the controls on the furnace to get some more heat into the basement. A few minutes later it was as warm as upstairs. Satisfied, she turned to the notebook she'd put next to the arthropod 'volunteers' she'd selected for the next round of experiments. "Let's see what happens, shall we?" she murmured, sitting on the stool next to the bench and taking her socks off. Everything else followed. "I wish you had some way to take clothes into account, you know," she added to her power, feeling slightly hard done by. "Some Changers get to change without having to undress. But me… No, my power doesn't do anything useful like that. And it cost me my favorite sweat shirt and pants." She could sense her power kind of sighing. "Don't give me that. Not knowing I had a Changer power is no excuse," she added with a grin. "We'll work on it."

    Nude, she stood next to the bench and made her selections. "Right, let's see… Start with the classics, I suppose." Tipping the wolf spider jar on its side, she moved the creature onto her hand, then walked to the center of the room. Activating her power, she was suddenly a very, very large wolf spider. "Excellent," she said with satisfaction, turning to look at her reflection in the big old mirror she'd found down here and cleaned up, then put against the wall for this exact purpose. "That works. Neat." Doing the internal actions, she examined the drider form, walking around a little and nodded. "Also works. Greg would shit himself." She giggled at the thought of the boy's likely reaction. Or, to be honest, that of most people. "Now, what happens if…" Returning to the bench, she picked up another jar and tipped the firefly out onto her palm, before returning the container to where it came from.

    Stepping back, not even noticing consciously how all her legs moved she was so used to it, she examined the firefly for a moment, then tried doing the merge with it while still merged with the spider. Not surprising her all that much, it didn't immediately work. 'OK, I kind of thought that might happen,' she thought, her eyes resting on the insect on her palm. 'But I still think this should work… How to do it though?'

    She tried poking her power in different ways, but for nearly twenty minutes, nothing worked. Her own ability appeared to be watching with fascination and mild doubt even as she kept trying.

    When she finally found the key, it took both of them completely by surprise. Pushing hard on a bit of her power that felt like it had something to do with what she was attempting, she more or less felt it move in a direction that didn't exist. Intrigued, she pushed harder, then slammed her will against it when it was recalcitrant. There was a distinct mental twitch like her mind had hit a pothole and she became very dizzy, collapsing to the concrete floor with a grunt. "Ow," she mumbled into the floor.

    When the dizziness died away, she slowly pushed herself to her feet, facing the mirror. The reflection she saw there made her stare.

    "Holy shit," she breathed after several seconds. "It worked!"

    In a sense, at least. It wasn't quite what she'd been aiming for, but it was certainly something. She was still roughly half human, but she had firefly antenna sticking out of her hair, and a pair of firefly forelimbs a few inches under her human arms, while her spider abdomen had changed shape and had wing cases on top. The coloration was completely different too. When she looked over her shoulder and spread the wings she now had, she found that the rear half of her spider abdomen was a hybrid between what it had started as and the back end of a firefly.

    "Wow," she said with glee. "That's really interesting. I wonder if… Oooh." She found the internal operations that made the firefly illumination process start up, and her abdomen lit up a cool and much brighter than she'd expected green-yellow color. "I like that," she cackled with satisfaction, flashing it on and off. After that first hesitation and disorientation, the instinctive knowledge of how to use her new parts seemed to come to her as easily as all the other times she'd done this. Possibly her power and or brain had issues with combining the two different creatures like this? Whatever, after that initial phase, everything was working perfectly.

    "Fucking amazing." She looked down at her extra appendages, tried moving them, and smiled when they did exactly what she wanted.

    After quite a bit of further practice, and a lot of notes, she'd found she could mix and match the human, firefly, and spider bits without any trouble. It was no harder now than one insect at a time had been before. "Very, very cool indeed," she chortled, looking at herself through Vespa's eyes and at her reflection in the mirror through her own. "Chalk up another win for horrific freaks of nature!"

    This definitely had possibilities.

    Her power, which was gaping at her somehow, fervently agreed.

    "Now. What happens when I unmerge?"

    She tried it, then looked quizzically at the flying glowing wolf spider in her hand. "Huh. I didn't expect that…"

    Lifting her eyes to the remaining test subjects, she grinned widely. "Next experiment, I think."

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    The jumping spider with a wasp stinger and wings was nearly as bizarre as the centipede/firefly/wolf spider mix. And when she tried various levels of human hybridization with them in different combinations, some of the results were weird even to her. The little thing at the back of her mind was laughing its ass off while feeling completely stunned all the time too.

    It took her a good two hours of playing around, but she finally worked out how to unscramble the various creatures back into what they'd started as, although she kept the spider firefly combo just because it was kind of fun. It would also be something her dad might find interesting, she thought.

    Making more notes, she tapped the pen on her cheek as she paced around the basement, which produced a constant tapping sound since she was playing with a half-centipede form at the moment. Again, because why not? Finishing the page, she flipped to a blank one and stared at it, thinking about some of the other ideas she'd had while pondering what she could figure out how to do.

    Finally she nodded. "That one is definitely worth trying," she told her very small audience. Unmerging from the centipede she put it back into the jar for now, then turned to the jumping spider. "You, I think."

    She launched it from the table where it was sitting onto her hand, smiling at the tiny arthropod. A moment's effort and she'd become a much, much larger version of the same creature. Again she was impressed by just how good its main eyes were. 'OK, the, let's see what happens…' she thought as she worked out what she was trying to do. Playing with the internal aspects of her power, she went back to a jumping spider drider, which she definitely wanted to try outside at some point, then further towards human. Her normal body with a spider abdomen was easy, of course. The next part was a tricky balance as she carefully tweaked the amount of spider to human, trying to get it almost entirely the latter but not quite to the point of unmerging entirely.

    It took quite a bit of effort, but she eventually succeeded. Turning in place she studied herself in the mirror. Neither her human eyes nor Vespa's could see anything that stood out as out of place, but she was still merged with the jumping spider. Feeling her arm, her fingertips could tell something about the internal structure of it was different, but on the outside it looked perfectly normal. Same with her legs, torso, everything.

    Looking around her eyes landed on one of her dad's toolboxes, the one he kept the big wrenches in along with a load of hammers. She'd struggled to move it without being in another form the day before. Walking over to it she bent, wrapped her hand around the handle, and stood up. And nearly fell over since it felt like it was weightless.

    "Fuck me," she exclaimed in shock. "That's amazing!"

    Hefting the box, she grinned like a lunatic. It took so little effort she could have sworn the thing was made of styrofoam. "Oh, yeah, this is fantastic," she said with enormous satisfaction. Putting it down, she grabbed the edge of the bench and lifted. Roughly three hundred pounds of wood, metal, and tools came clear of the floor like she was moving a chair in the kitchen.

    "Oh, Dad's going to freak," she giggled, carefully lowering it again. "So cool."

    Moving to the middle of the basement she bent her knees then jumped. When she landed on the floor she rubbed her head and glared at the ceiling beam that had whacked it. "Ow."

    Apparently her jumping ability was rather more enhanced than she'd accounted for. And the ceiling was far too low for such experiments…

    Despite the minor pain, which was quite a lot more minor than it should have been, she was extremely satisfied with the outcome of her experiments. It proved that her Changer ability had all sorts of intriguing offshoots, some of which were potentially a touch scary, but most of which seemed absolutely incredibly useful. After some thought, she unmerged from the spider and very carefully measured it, length and leg span, writing the results into her notes. Then she repeated the exercise, finding it much easier the second time to pull off. She'd try staying like this for a while to see what happened. It seemed safe enough, it would give some useful feedback on whether the size increase that appeared connected to the merging process happened with something other than Vespa, and being at least a low end Brute was fun too.

    She'd already noticed that the light bulb in the ceiling was visibly flickering if she let her power set her vision to spider levels of speed, so that indicated that her brain was running faster too. All the benefits of the arthropod changes without the minor drawback of making people shit themselves on the spot, she thought with a grin.

    And it also meant that a jumping drider was a mere thought away. She didn't think that was likely to be a huge priority but you never knew.

    Very pleased with the results of her work, she let the other creatures go back to what they'd been doing, the wasp moving to a nice warm spot to go back into torpitude while the rest scattered, got dressed, and went upstairs to do some more reading. All in all it had been a good day so far.

    She didn't like the way she'd gotten powers, but the actual powers she had no problem with at all. Even if the power itself seemed to find her somewhat strange. If nothing else it seemed to be gradually getting used to her, and as that happened it was becoming more and more cooperative.

    Taylor was already thinking of all sorts of other things to try, but for now, she was satisfied.

    Increasing her range step by step seemed like the next thing to practice. She was very curious to see what would happen when she finally mastered that part.
     
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    • Assembler Maniac said:
    Thinker: pretty much (multi-tasking even a couple dozen insects has got to be damn difficult at minimum)
    Tinker: 6 (she's gotta figure out how to mix-match bug parts with each other AND with human, not an easy thing to do)
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    Wrong, Thinker, not tinker.
    Ain't like she made anything, right?
    Her canon costume was tinkering, basically, crafting without blueprints, is tinkering.
    Figuring out how to use her powers, to craft, is however, Thinker, while the crafting, is tinker.

    Perhaps tinker zero, since it's mundane levels of crafting skill, but...
    Hopefully, Taylor can figure out how to create her canon bug shell laminated armor plates.
    Just think of the weapons & tools, she could make that way and then we are not even talking about wood or spidersilk.

    As for a fun crossbow design, look up some of the Lord Of The Rings, movie verse, hostile orc-y designs.
    It's a pump-action crossbow, using a original patent from back then.
    So yes, using spidersilk, wood & laminated bug shell armor plates, she could make one heck of a crossbow.
    And if she then adds in the Von Helsing movie, it's autoloader system, for the bolts them self...

    A Bo Staff and say, sword/knife sheets, should also be possible.
    Even creating a new car interieur, might be possible, for her.
    I so hope that she takes up smith-ing & other crafting ways, like pottery & glass making.

    And hey, a new chapter...
    Off to read it.
     
    mp3.1415player said:
    'I did not expect this,' she mused, taking a bite out of the burger. 'But it's amazingly cool. I can see some really interesting possibilities here… I should make a note.'

    Unfortunately she didn't have a pen or paper, so she just mentally put it down as great success and finished eating.
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    Taylor, you missed an opportunity there. The note should have been Huge Success.
     
    she's done a visual inspection, but I wonder if she'll find a difference with the tape measure.
    If the excess mass is coming from her directly, then that will likely be minor but noticeable at this point.
    If the excess mass is coming from her power, particularly some mind/body interface effect powered by QA, then she might find minor body image issues (she's a teenage girl, of course she has body image issues) being addressed by her power.
     
    Nimodes said:
    she's done a visual inspection, but I wonder if she'll find a difference with the tape measure.
    If the excess mass is coming from her directly, then that will likely be minor but noticeable at this point.
    If the excess mass is coming from her power, particularly some mind/body interface effect powered by QA, then she might find minor body image issues (she's a teenage girl, of course she has body image issues) being addressed by her power.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Taylor is becoming a Queen, naturally, her form gets better & better.
     
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