Writing the last three words of the essay assignment, Taylor dropped the pen on the paper and leaned back with a sigh of relief. Her enhanced body meant that aches and pains were a thing of the past as far as she could tell, but this sort of thing was still somewhat tedious.
Regardless, it was done, and having read it over and checked for mistakes, she nodded to herself, then put the paperwork into the envelope. She'd managed to get all the current work done by eleven, having woken up early feeling in a good mood and ready to face the day.
Apparently the improvements she'd made to herself had all sorts of useful effects, not all physical. She found her thinking somewhat clearer in a hard to define sense and her memory, always good to begin with, improved too. Her merged form had a lot of benefits over the standard human one, the massive boost in thinking speed being one of the best perks. It made this sort of thing take a lot less time than it used to although she had to be careful to write slowly enough that the pen didn't break…
Even so, her work was getting faster and easier to complete and she was very pleased with how it was all going. And now she had the rest of the day free to do other things with a clear conscience, which was handy.
Sealing the envelope after double-checking everything was inside, she took it downstairs with her as she went into the kitchen. It seemed like snack time to her. While she was munching on an apple held in an insectoid lower limb, having manifested a spare pair of arms for the utility of it and as an experiment, she made a sandwich with her human hands. The level of multitasking she had these days was ridiculous and it seemed to work pretty well even aside from her arthropod control aspect. In the last few days she'd been experimenting with reading two books at the same time, using Vespa to do the reading and her scorpion, who she'd finally called Impy, to turn the pages, while she read the second one more normally. It had turned out to work perfectly which was gratifying. And if she wasn't mistaken, Vespa's eyesight was also improving steadily. The hornet's eyes were nearly as sharp as her own, at least with glasses, were, which was noticeably better than she recalled from the first time they'd linked. She assumed it was all part and parcel of the strange growth process.
Both creatures were still very gradually enlarging during a merge, but seemed to be slowing down at a rate that suggested to her that whatever was really causing the effect had nearly reached its limit. Probably a good thing since Impy had outgrown her tank by a significant margin now, being nearly the length of her arm from nose to tail with her claws stretching out close to fourteen inches.
She was a very, very large scorpion.
Taylor's dad had looked at her with wide eyes the last time she'd shown him the creature, and paled a little. Apparently he was less accustomed to scorpions that were much too large than he was to hornets. Or even jumping spiders…
To be fair Jumpy was really very cute indeed, on the rare occasions Taylor unmerged from the spider. She'd worried that she was being mean to Jumpy by keeping her merged all the time, but as far as she could tell the spider was entirely unbothered by this, as were all of the others. Jumpy was much closer to something that had an actual mind than any of the rest, except Impy possibly due to the sheer size of both of them now, but even she was nowhere near the brain power of even a mouse yet. Probably remarkably bright for a spider, but not exactly intelligent in any real way.
But they were definitely increasing there too. Taylor could feel it through her power. It was very interesting indeed and she wondered whether it would continue, what the limit was, and if it would pass down to any offspring… Perhaps she'd find out at some point.
However the crux of the matter was that none of her merged arthropods appeared to be in any distress as a result of the process, and if anything seemed to like it, from the impressions she got. Which assuaged her guilt over taking them over like that, which had been slight but real.
As a result she'd added several crabs, the firespider, three other spiders of various species including a black widow she'd located at the union office a week ago to her delight, two different centipedes, a wasp, a cockroach, and a few other things to the merged creatures. So far there had been no issue with doing this and no signs that it was a strain at all. If anything it was getting easier. Everything just seemed to click into place now, with hardly any effort. Apparently like in so many things practice really helped, she thought, slicing her finished sandwiches in two, then going to the table to sit down.
Because Impy was so big now she'd decided to just keep her merged too, along with Jumpy, since if nothing else she didn't yet have suitable enclosures for them at the moment. She was building up quite a library of arthropods, as she thought of it, and the more she experimented the more ideas she came up with to mix aspects of them all into something new. When it warmed up enough that all the really interesting bugs became easier to find she was looking forward to adding all sorts of cool stuff to her repertoire…
And creating some fun hybrids too. She could see a lot of possibilities there for useful outcomes, although she'd have to be careful to keep them all under control. It was possible people might find them a little upsetting, for some reason. It was odd but seemed to be a thing.
The sole exception to her current collection that she wasn't keeping merged was Vespa. The hornet was a special case for a number of reasons. Taylor still hadn't quite decided when she was going to try recreating the deep link she had with Vespa with something else, but she was fairly sure she'd figured out how to do it now. In theory. Maybe.
Smiling to herself, she finished the first sandwich and picked up the second. "I think it will work but without trying I'm not sure," she commented to the by-now extremely impressively large hornet, who was close to six inches long. Her hornet self was eating a small piece of salami, which Taylor found quite tasty from that viewpoint. And it seemed to agree with the insect's metabolism although she was pretty sure that wild hornets didn't subsist on pizza ingredients. Even though they were carnivorous.
Holding up her free hand she idly changed it like she'd tried on Sunday night with her dad, to the crab/scorpion exoskeleton armored form. Turning it over she admired it. "This is bizarre but it's fun too," she told the hornet. "I really need to see how well it holds up, though. Feels really tough, and I know how strong the super-hornet body is. This should be way tougher…" Musing on methods to combine such armor with other forms, which looked simple enough to do, she reverted her hand to normal, finished eating, then tidied up. Flying Vespa onto her head, she went back upstairs to use the toilet, before returning to the kitchen. Having sent her dad a text telling him her plans, she put her coat on, grabbed her backpack with the library books in, added the envelope of schoolwork, and left the house, Vespa tucked securely under her hair on the back of her neck as usual.
There were some more books she needed to get, these ones to return having finished them and largely memorized the contents, and she wanted to visit the pet shop again. Mike had lots of fascinating creatures available and Taylor was planning on making a list now she had a better idea of what she could do. It would still require some bigger tanks, which was a work in progress. She was pondering creating some more hybrids for the small tanks on her shelf, if only because they looked sad empty like they currently were. She kept adding the inhabitants to her internal library, after all.
Grinning to herself she jogged along, reveling in how easy it was these days. Her overall physical condition had definitely improved quite considerably even past the merged enhancements, she'd discovered after taking careful notes for weeks. She'd lost the last traces of pudge now and her muscles were noticeably more toned. She even had abs for heaven's sake! Not something she'd ever expected, but highly welcome.
Still a stick, she thought to herself wryly, but more stick insect than stick figure. Which amused her enough she started giggling inside her hood.
Life was certainly looking up in all sorts of ways she'd never have considered or believed a few months ago.
And it seemed set to continue in that vein, which was extremely welcome after the shit she'd gone through for so long. Having her dad back was the best part of it, although she certainly put her powers a very, very close second.
Cheerfully humming to herself, she kept moving, finding the chill damp of the day bracing rather than oppressive even while looking forward to warmer days.
Shortly she was sitting on a nice warm bus having slipped her envelope into a mail box, traveling towards the center of the city while playing with very slowly expanding her sensing range, her power now almost resigned to her careful and measured experimentation even though she could still feel it wanting to throw caution to the wind.
She hadn't quite broken it of that habit, but it was learning.
Just like her. And apparently having just as much fun.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"How are you feeling today?"
Missy sighed as she picked at the bedclothes over her chest. "Tired. Depressed I guess. Embarrassed. Worried. Pick any one you want, I've got lots."
Amy, who was sitting in the chair next to her bed, chuckled, smiling a little. Missy glanced sideways at her and noticed that the older girl seemed less stressed-looking than she so often was, although also tired. Which was normal enough for the healer.
"May I?" Amy lifted her hand, motioning with it towards Missy's wrist. The blonde nodded wordlessly and moved her arm closer. Putting her hand on it, Amy was still for a few seconds. "Nothing physically wrong now. Stress hormones are a little high, not surprisingly, and you still need at least a couple more days of good meals to rebuild your resources. I don't want to force it, so it's best to do it the normal way." She released the younger girl's wrist and sat back in her chair, regarding Missy closely.
"What's bothering you at the moment?" she asked a moment or two later.
Sighing again, Missy dropped her head back on the pillow. She was still in bed because it was too early in her opinion to get up, and she was feeling mentally tired even if not physically so. The hospital staff hadn't pushed her, her actual doctor telling her that she needed the rest and time to recuperate no matter what her lack of injuries might suggest. After such a massive trauma even with Parahuman healing, it was natural to require time to recover from everything. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and clearly Amy and he trusted each other, and she trusted Amy, so she'd listen to the man.
To be honest it was kind of a relief to just not have to do anything for a while. Not go home to the shouting and the passive aggressive bullshit, or go to work and deal with being sidelined and Sophia.
Of the two Sophia was far worse, in her view, although the way she was treated like a fragile china doll pissed her off something terrible. Hence her, in hindsight, very unwise decision to go looking for something useful to do.
Unfortunately she'd found it, and had discovered the hard way that some things might just be a touch out of her ability to handle no matter what she might have assumed at the time. The end result hadn't been fun and every time she recalled that night she felt sick. Partly due to embarrassment from not being able to live up to what she felt she should, partly due to recalling the pain and the blood and the dead people and…
Taking a slow breath, Missy forced that imagery out of her mind.
It had not been her finest moment. And sooner or later she was going to have to face people she'd rather not while feeling the way she did right now. She'd let them down, done something stupid, very nearly paid the final price for it, and was wondering what to do about it.
Explaining this to Amy was going to be hard, she thought dismally.
Amy nodded. "You fucked up and you're obsessing about it," she commented with a knowing air. Missy stared at her and blinked a couple of times.
"That's not quite what…"
"It's the gist of it, yeah?"
"…yeah. More or less I guess." Missy rolled her head to gaze at the ceiling. She could see Amy out of the corner of one eye, the healer watching her and waiting. "I can't stand being sidelined so much," she finally went on in a low voice, feeling stupid and embarrassed admitting something she'd never told anyone else. At least in such straightforward terms. "I'm the one with the longest experience in the whole Wards lineup and everyone treats me like I'm just a kid."
"You are just a kid," Amy pointed out, although not unkindly. It was odd hearing her voice so… not snarky, Missy thought. Normally the other girl gave off the impression that she was wishing she was somewhere else even while she healed people efficiently and quickly, but… Right now she was as relaxed, in a sense, as Missy had ever seen her. Missy liked Amy a lot, and admired her, even though they weren't close. The last few days had made it clear the respect went both ways, so the comment didn't have the same effect it would have done if it had come from Sophia, or even any of the other Wards. She half-sighed, half-laughed.
"I'm still the most experienced," she replied making Amy chuckle.
"I'm not denying that. You're definitely the most professional Ward by a long way, and have the most powerful abilities. Probably in the entire ENE division to be honest, assuming that what I think your power does is right. But you're still not even thirteen yet and you're tiny." She poked Missy in the ribs, grinning. "Pocket sized even. It's cute, and people will always point that out even if you glare at them. Doesn't mean you're not good at what you do, and you'll get better."
"Thanks, I guess?" Missy grumbled, although she was smiling a little despite herself. Anyone else calling her cute was going to wish they hadn't, but somehow from Amy it didn't sting as much as it usually did. Because the other girl was her friend and not using it to dismiss her, she thought.
"You're welcome. But the point is that you're very young and being so small, you have a limit to your endurance. Everyone does, but yours is physically probably less than a lot of other people. You're in good shape, yeah, but you're not an athlete like Shadow Stalker is for example." Amy shrugged as Missy watched her. "Hookwolf is… was… a fucking nightmare. His regeneration let him keep going through almost anything, he didn't get tired nearly as fast as practically anyone else would, he was a big guy and very strong, and of course he was totally nuts. Anyone would have had huge problems taking the bastard on one on one. Even Armsmaster had trouble with that fucker, you know that as well as I do. Vicky nearly got her ass handed to her by him once even though she's much stronger and faster, because he just didn't know when to give up. About the only person who could probably take him out quickly would be Lung and I wouldn't want to have guaranteed that, honestly. They fought several times and he always managed to escape."
Amy leaned forward, clasping her hands together and putting her elbows on her knees as she gazed at Missy. "You, a twelve year old girl who's about seventy pounds soaking wet, held that shitbag off single handed, while seriously wounded, for nearly fifteen minutes during which he was trying as hard as he possibly could to murderize you. I doubt any of the other Wards, or quite a few of the Protectorate members, could have done the same in the same circumstances without backup or equipment." She smiled a little darkly as Missy thought over her words.
"But he'd have won if that hornet didn't step in," she finally said, although Amy's remarks had definitely cheered her up a bit.
"Oh, sure, you were about to be absolutely boned," the healer said happily, grinning as Missy winced, glared at her, then couldn't help laughing. "Completely shredded. Little bits of Vista all over the street…"
"Oh my god, Amy," Missy gasped, rolling in laughter at the black humor and the weird relief she suddenly felt. "Shut up!"
"Vista mince would be on the menu… Ooh! Vistaburgers!"
Missy pulled the pillow out from under her head and threw it at the chortling older girl, making her duck although not stop laughing. "Enough. Please. I had a really good grumpy mood going on and you've ruined it now."
"My job here is done," Amy replied with a satisfied look, tossing the pillow back to Missy, who replaced it and lay back, feeling distinctly more cheerful although still at the back of her mind tired and worried.
"You are a very strange person, Amy," she said, making Amy grin again. "Why aren't you like this in public?"
The grin faded. Amy seemed to think for a while as Missy waited, curious to see what the answer would be. "It's complicated," Amy finally replied with a sigh of her own. "Part of it is, you see some absolutely horrible things doing what I do. You were nowhere near the worst, believe me. Although seeing a friend hurt that badly is… unpleasant. People are also… well, let's say that someone thanking me and meaning it rather than just making mouth noises is the exception rather than the rule. Sure, I heal people because it's the right thing, and I'm not expecting gratitude because people are assholes, but it would be nice if they didn't treat me like an underpaid fast food worker who just gave them the wrong order." She grimaced as Missy couldn't help giggling even though she felt bad for her friend.
"You see the worst of people doing this job, as well as the best," Amy continued quietly, meeting Missy's eyes. "Hospitals aren't fun places for the most part. People don't come here because they want to, after all. Even so, it's annoying having so many dickheads demand that I drop everything and kiss their booboo better because they're more important than the code blue I'm trying to keep alive. Believe me, that happens. More that you'd expect."
"Kiss it better…" Missy giggled, finding the comment hilarious for some reason. Amy reluctantly smiled as she kept laughing. "You could!"
"I could. I'm not going to," Amy assured her with a smirk. "Most of them aren't my type aside from anything else."
She shrugged. "But yeah, while I guess I enjoy helping people, although sometimes I really want to kick some of them in the dick…"
"Which you could heal," Missy suggested with her own smirk.
"Which I could heal, yes, but the doctors would glare at me," Amy nodded, grinning a little, "Even though I like helping, I just find a lot of it all… tedious. Same shit, different day, kind of." She shook her head. "It gets to you after a while. Ordinary doctors have the same problem, although without the Parahuman part obviously. And this city is more likely than most places to make the work get very suddenly much too exciting too, which adds that perfect little sprinkle of total chaos and complete terror when you're least wanting it."
"We do seem to have some weird things sometimes," Missy nodded wisely. "It's home but it's fucked up."
"Yeah. That it is." Amy picked up the jug of water on the bedside table and poured two glasses, then handed Missy one which she took, taking a sip from the other. "And all this legal garbage that's kicked off recently is causing even more stress, which isn't helping much. Doesn't affect me personally, really, at least not at the moment, but the hospital staff are having a lot of problems."
"I heard that was going on but I don't know much about it," Missy admitted.
The other girl waved her free hand to indicate the entire area. "Shit's fucked up," she explained helpfully, making Missy snicker. "It started with Winslow. Which is a shithole. No, that's being unfair to shitholes. It's worse. We've had more injuries from there than you'd ever believe, going back long before I Triggered. The hospital has been doing what it was supposed to in reporting all the crap they've found, but long story short, there's been a whole shitload of people taking bribes, threatening people, you name it, to cover all that up. It all came to a head about six weeks ago when someone was brought in from there in a really bad state, after something… absolutely revolting… was done to them. A 'prank' they claimed." Amy made little sarcastic finger quotes, her face expressing deep anger.
"If I ever find out who did it, I'll show them what I think of that sort of fucking prank. Assholes. It was attempted murder as far as I'm concerned."
Missy shook her head in disbelief. "A school let things like that go on?"
"Yeah. No, I don't know why either. It's fucked up. But anyway, I had to heal this poor person up, and they nearly ended up in a coma before I got to them. All sorts of problems. Even after I healed them there were lingering aftereffects, like with you, but hopefully those are resolved now. I haven't run into them to check, although I do wonder. So the hospital ended up taking that event as the last straw because they had promises in writing that Winslow would stop that sort of thing happening again. Obviously they lied their asses off. The administration went off the deep end, lots of things happened, and the end result is politically total chaos and god knows where it's going to end up. Winslow is fucked though. Closed down completely like you've heard, I guess, and so far no indication when it'll reopen. Or if it will."
"I saw some threads about that on PHO but I didn't read much of them," Missy replied with a nod. "It didn't look very interesting, honestly."
"It's boring as hell for the most part unless you like local politics," Amy chuckled. "Which most people don't I guess. Not surprising considering what the local politics tend to be. But the whole thing has really blown up like you wouldn't believe and every time I look into it there's something new. The web of corruption being uncovered is breathtaking in the sheer ghastly scope of horribleness as Carol put it." She smiled a little. "She is following the whole thing with great interest, of course. I get the impression that she knows some of the people involved, but we don't really talk about it."
Amy thought for a moment, then smiled slightly less darkly. "The patient who kicked all this off was one of the few people who thanked me and meant it. Genuinely respectful and grateful. I don't see that very much. Snarky as fuck too. I like that."
"Who would have guessed?" Missy replied dryly, making Amy grin. "You're so sweet and cheerful all the time."
"Indeed I am, young one. Never forget my sheer niceness. It's off the fucking scale."
The pair grinned at each other. "Yeah. I can see." Missy rubbed her eyes, feeling a wave of tiredness, more mental than physical, sweep over her. It passed a moment later. When she opened her eyes Amy was looking at her with mild concern. "Nothing, just tired," she said to the unanswered query. After a moment, she asked, "What do you think about that fuck off big hornet that saved me and nuked Hookwolf?" The blonde girl was desperately curious about the whole thing, not only because she owed her life to a vast insect, which was weird beyond belief. She'd read all the threads on PHO about it she could find and while there were an awful lot of guesses and theories, ranging from almost plausible to batshit insane, no one had any actually provable answers.
The healer sighed faintly. "I really don't know what that was," she replied a few seconds of thought later. "I'm certain it was alive. I didn't touch it, because I'm not fucking daft, but my power is pretty good at letting me look at a living thing and work out if it is a living thing. That hornet was as alive as I am. It's not any sort of projection I've ever heard of, I'm sure of that."
"Case 53 maybe?" Missy pondered out loud, recalling all the various ideas that had been on PHO so far. That was a common one although in many ways it didn't fit as far as she was concerned.
"Possibly one," Amy allowed, nodding. "I've met quite a few Case 53s and they can be really weird. But… I don't personally think so. I didn't see the tattoo, but then I didn't actually look for it at the time, so that doesn't prove anything. But in general, as far as I know, either Case 53s are more or less normal human-appearance, or really divergent from anything alive. That thing looked exactly like a much, much too big Asian Giant Hornet. I've checked. Exact match except way too fucking large to even be viable. Never mind the intelligence. No Case 53 on record as far as I can find fits such a profile. That doesn't mean it can't happen, I suppose, because no one actually knows how Case 53s happen to start with, but there's no record of anything like this before. At least from any source I could find. The PRT might know more but they're not saying."
Wondering if she could find out, Missy nodded her understanding.
"A Biotinker did it?" she suggested, thinking of the next most popular explanation, and the one that made people really worried. "Like Blasto or Nilbog?"
Her friend's face twisted. "Those fuckers. Blasto is an idiot and does plants mostly, and his stuff is crap. I've…" She paused, then resumed, "Let's not go there, but trust me, he's nowhere near good enough to pull off a sapient giant hornet. Nilbog? Murderous little monster that someone should nuke from orbit. And the hornet didn't look anything like his work. Not even close. If there's another Biotinker around capable of something that impressive, I've never heard anything at all about them. Might be new, sure, but who knows?" She sighed a little. "I really don't know. It's possible but there's just not enough information yet. I hope not because the public and the PRT would go mental."
"What's left?" Missy asked, thinking. "It can't be natural, right?"
"Definitely not, no," Amy agreed. "Not on anything approaching our planet."
"Is it an alien then, do you think?" Missy was confused, but the idea, while it sounded nuts, was also sort of cool. Her friend laughed with a shake of her head.
"Probably not but I wouldn't want to rule it out completely. It's probably not a demon either." She finished her water then put the glass back on the table, leaning back and crossing her legs at the ankle as she thought. "That's the problem. Every idea someone has you can come up with a good argument against as well as for. If I could touch it, I might be able to work it out, but I'd have to find it first, then ask if it minded. Because I'm fucking well not going to assume. I saw what it did to Hookwolf…"
"I saw it do it," Missy commented in a low voice with a shiver. "It was much worse than you'd believe." She could still smell the burning. "Although the glowing was impressive."
"Glowing?" Amy echoed curiously with a look at her. "What glowing?"
"Oh." She thought back, and realized she'd forgotten to mention that when Miss Militia had interviewed her on Sunday morning. She'd been feeling very out of sorts then, extremely depressed and angsty, and wasn't in the mood to think too hard about what she'd experienced. Apparently she'd managed to omit what might be a pertinent detail, which was something else she'd get a lecture about sooner or later. Sighing a little, she explained what had happened, making Amy look intrigued.
"Huh. That's… odd." The healer thought while Missy waited. "Very odd. That sounds like a luciferin reaction, but hornets don't have that. Fireflies do, but…" She pondered the matter. "Strange. I didn't see anything that looked like a light generation organ."
"The whole thing lit up," Missy commented. "Or nearly. It had light coming from all sorts of places, even the wings. Really bright too, when it first did that it was like a green flashgun. I had spots in front of my eyes."
"Wow. That's impressively high output. Impossibly high output, technically, I think." Amy appeared fascinated. "I wonder how it does that?"
Having no answer, or knowledge of what was involved, Missy just shrugged.
They were silent for a while, each busy with their own thoughts. Amy was apparently mulling over the information Missy had given her while Missy herself was trying to come up with other possible origins for the hornet. Eventually she said, "Could it be a Changer, maybe?" somewhat tentatively, causing Amy to look up at her from where she'd been studying the floor by all appearances. The other girl frowned, so she expanded on her comment.
"The hornet. Maybe it's a Changer power? It might explain how it vanished so well. A couple of people on PHO suggested that, and lots of other people laughed at them. There was a lot of arguing about it and I couldn't really work out what the problem was but they seemed to decide it wasn't a thing."
Nodding her understanding, Amy replied, "That's because, at least in every case I'm aware of, a Changer form is always equal or greater in mass than the Parahuman starts off with. No one understands where the extra mass comes from, or where it goes when they change back, but that's powers bullshit for you. The point is, think of Hookwolf. He went from a guy about two hundred pounds or so to at least half a ton, sometimes more. We never did find out if that was his limit either. Lung, he starts off as a more or less normal human and has ended up big enough to go toe to toe with Leviathan! The Nazi cape Night is another one, much larger and heavier in her Changer form than as a human. Even her partner Fog seems to be about the same mass in his Changer form as he was to begin with, although it's basically gas at that point. It's why he can fill so much space with his acid."
Shrugging a little as Missy thought over her words, she went on, "Now that hornet, sure, it's fucking huge for an insect, but it certainly wasn't anything close to a human in actual mass. You could see from just how it walked. I've watched the security videos, and thought about what I saw, and I'd put an educated guess on it weighing about thirty or forty pounds at most. So, if it's a Changer, and using the normal rules Changers seem to use based on everything I'm aware of, the human in question would need to be about six or less. Or an implausibly tiny midget." She shook her head a little bewilderedly. "That seems unlikely. And it didn't sound like a little kid either. It sounded pissed off, yeah, but more like an adult than a toddler. And I doubt a kid that young would have been able to deal with Hookwolf and save you so effectively too."
"So if it is a Changer…" Missy trailed off.
"It's doing something no one has seen before. Yeah. I can't promise that's impossible, because with powers who the hell knows, but it's at least unlikely enough that no one is seriously considering it." Amy spread her hands. "The issue is that if you think it out you keep ending up with nothing useful, or at least sensible based on current knowledge. Which is kind of irritating."
"Weird."
"Yeah. Very weird."
The older girl looked at her watch. "Sorry, I need to get on with my rounds. I came in early to talk to you and see how you're doing."
"A lot better now, thanks," Missy replied honestly. "Not good, but better."
There was a tap on the door, before someone she'd never seen opened it and peered in. "Oh, hey, Doctor Willis. You made it." Amy smiled at the dark-complexioned woman who had turned up, Doctor Willis stepping inside and closing the door behind her. She was holding a thick file in one hand. "Missy, this is Doctor Willis. She's a therapist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder and that sort of issue. I asked her if she'd mind having a talk with you." Startled, Missy looked between them then opened her mouth.
"Don't worry, Miss Biron, I am fully covered by more NDAs than you'd believe, and have worked with PRT and Protectorate staff in the past on a number of occasions," Doctor Willis assured her, not moving from the door but watching her with interest. "Your identity is safe with me, and in fact I was already aware of it for reasons I can't go into. May I take a seat?"
Turning to Amy, Missy searched her eyes. The gaze of her friend was sympathetic and knowing. Staring into the brown orbs, Missy finally sighed and nodded. "Sure."
"Thank you." The woman walked over and sat in the second of the two chairs the room had, then studied Missy for a moment. Fidgeting under the gaze, Missy met her eyes directly. After a few seconds Doctor Willis smiled faintly. "Yes. I think we do indeed need a talk. Do you want Panacea to stay?"
Turning to Amy, Missy thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. That's all right. Thanks, Amy."
"My pleasure, Missy. I'll check in on you later, OK? And if you need me for anything, just hit the call button and ask the nurse," her friend replied, getting to her feet. Putting her hand on Missy's shoulder, she squeezed gently for a moment. "Talk to her. It'll help."
"Did it help you?" Missy couldn't help asking. Amy sighed.
"I'm a work in progress," she replied with a glance at Doctor Willis, who looked somewhat amused. "And waited way too long to ask for help. But that's a story for later." Walking over to the door, she looked back, smiled, then left, pulling her costume's hood up in the process. Amy Dallon went through the door, and Panacea left, Missy thought with a small grin. Turning back to the patiently waiting doctor, she raised an eyebrow.
"Now what?" she queried.
"Now we discuss whatever you want to discuss, and I see if I can help you put things into a context that helps," the doctor replied calmly. "I don't expect instant results, but based on my experience, we're unlikely to make things worse at least." She smiled when Missy giggled. "Shall we start?"
"Might as well," Missy replied. "I don't have anything else to do and there's nothing good on TV."
For some reason she was definitely feeling better, although the deep down worry and tiredness was still there. Amy had helped her a lot, and with any luck, this doctor could too.
And maybe, just maybe, when she went back to work, she'd find it easier to handle.
Although if Sophia made any stupid comments about what happened, she was going to hurt that bitch.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Leafing through a book on microprocessor architecture, Taylor nodded to herself. She put it on her pile and added another one on assembly language programming. From her computer classes at Winslow, the only good class she had and one she enjoyed even aside from that, she'd learned quite a lot of things, but she was all too aware she was just starting. As with so many other subjects she found herself needing to know about to maximize the utility of everything she was discovering about her power.
Moving down the shelves she kept looking for anything that might be useful, grabbing another book on college-level chemistry too. Having found all the ones she'd gone specifically looking for, she picked up the whole stack and headed for the computers.
Half an hour later she'd also downloaded a number of useful ebooks, of which she was building quite a collection. One that took a lot less room on the shelves too, she thought with a small smile while she unplugged the USB stick. Scrolling through the page on marine biology research she'd been poking around on, she paused as one research paper title caught her interest. Curious, she clicked on the link, and read the summary, then skimmed the paper itself with interest. 'Hmm… That could be useful,' she thought as she reread one paragraph to make sure she understood what it was saying. 'Very useful. More experiments are needed…'
Taylor could see all sorts of possibilities presented by the conclusions from that one paper. And it would be quite easy to test.
Pleased that random chance had handed her yet another intriguing opportunity, she logged out, then got up and went to check her books out. Minutes later she was on the street, walking towards the exotic pet shop. Even from nearly five hundred yards away she could sense all the creatures amenable to her power in it, like a familiar beacon in the middle of the blizzard of other tiny life all around her. She was gradually opening herself more and more to the full scope of what that part of her power allowed, being extremely cautious not to overdo it due to not wanting a repeat of what had happened in the early days. Her power seemed to sigh somewhere at the back of her mind but didn't argue. She wasn't certain she would get the same disorientation now, admittedly, but having no intention of finding out since it was horrible, Taylor just smiled to herself and kept working the way she wanted to.
Even with the smaller number of insects around at this time of year due to the temperature there were still an awful lot of them. Some places had more than others, cockroaches for example had specific environments they liked, as did silverfish, centipedes, spiders, and quite a few more that were commensal with humans. The more independent ones like wasps, bees, and so on, were much rarer although she could easily detect quite a few around the place, hibernating for the winter but slowly starting to get ready for warmer weather. She could easily prod them into activity but saw little reason to do so unnecessarily since they could end up being harmed and there was no real excuse to wipe them all out in her view. Keeping her metaphorical eyes open for anything particularly interesting, and practicing using the insect sense to get a feel for everything going on around her, she wandered along in no particular hurry.
As she neared the side street Mike's shop was on, at the limit of her current range she became aware of something odd. "Huh…" she mumbled, curious. "I wonder what that is?"
She was detecting insects in a large open space underground. Below the usual parking garages some of the office buildings had, and the cellars that were here and there. The city, as far as she knew, had quite a high water table, so this close to the bay not a lot of places had underground construction historically since it was a pain to keep water out and expensive if you got it wrong. Further inland, like where her house was, it was different, but this area was only about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The net result was that anything more than perhaps a story underground was rare.
Yet as she walked closer, passing the street leading to the exotic pet shop because she couldn't work out what she was sensing, she could feel the space the insects were in was much deeper than that. About ninety to a hundred feet in places. 'What is that?' she thought with a frown. Stopping at an intersection, she looked towards where she could sense the oddity, about three hundred yards away now. It was off to the right, down the road that led towards the area of the city that housed most of the banking businesses and financial companies. All she could see was a number of ten and fifteen story tall office blocks, with a few coffee shops and that sort of thing catering to office workers as well. While she knew the city didn't have nearly the amount of such business as some places, Brockton Bay was still pretty large and the financial and commercial district covered several blocks.
None of the things she could think of involving moving money around between people who had too much of it required a space that big underground. Except possibly a bank vault full of gold or something, but the insects she was sensing weren't in a bank vault.
Some of them were in what appeared to be an armory, though…
'What the fuck?'
She checked again, looking through dozen of tiny eyes with the ease of long practice and the way her mind worked these days helping too. Yep. Lots of guns. Way too many guns for any normal person to think of it as other than way too many guns. Had she found an underground hidden military base or something?
Slightly wide eyed Taylor thought, then looked casually around, confirming with her own eyes that no one was staring at her suspiciously. Resuming her wandering, having paused only for a second or two, she kept the underground whatever it was within range as she headed for a small cafe she could see a little distance along the road. She was hungry anyway and the smells she could pick up from the local wildlife inside were enticing.
Having bought what turned out to be a very good bacon and eggs with all the trimmings, and some tea, Taylor sat and slowly ate while the bulk of her attention was engaged in mapping out what she'd stumbled across with hundreds of tiny creatures. It didn't take her long to deduce that the underground facility likely didn't belong to any law enforcement or military organization she was aware of. There were no signs anywhere saying "US ARMY SNEAKY BASE" or anything like that, none of the guys moving around inside were wearing uniforms she recognized, although they did look military based on her experience with some people her dad knew, and overall it just didn't feel right.
But what was it? Her immediate second thought had been something the Empire was behind, because she knew they had far too many weapons and presumably had to store them somewhere. But she could see some of the people doing various things weren't exactly E88 material, being of the wrong ethnic grouping, so that seemed unlikely on reflection.
What did that leave? Some superhero group that was working behind the scenes very quietly? Possibly, but why? Or some other cape villain? That seemed more and more plausible the longer she watched and explored. Not Empire. Almost certainly not ABB since only about three of them seemed to be Asian and none of them were wearing ABB colors. Not that mercenary group she'd heard about… Faultline, that was it. Her group was, at least publicly, far smaller and had several Case 53s in it. All those guys looked perfectly normal. Not an obvious parahuman in the place.
Except that guy.
She focused her attention on the skinny dude at the desk in the deepest part of what she was now calling in her mind The Base through a few spiders in his air ducts. The individual in question was wearing a weird costume, all in black with a white snake winding up one leg onto his torso. Puzzled she kept watch, while eating her bacon and thinking. Chewing, she picked up her phone and opened a web browser, the fairly basic device being more or less capable of simple web searches but not really up to seriously replacing a computer. Her dad hadn't wanted to spring for a full blown modern smart phone, partly because the data plans were pretty costly. She'd agreed with his decision but right at the moment was wishing she had something better.
Even so, she fiddled with the device until she got to a PHO post listing all the known Parahumans in Brockton Bay on both sides of the law. She was amused to see Hornet of Unusual Size was the latest entry. That might be fun to read about later. Now, though, she scrolled through the top post looking for a clue to what she'd found. Eventually she settled on one name.
'Coil,' she read curiously. 'Little is known other than his name and a basic description. It is unknown for certain whether he even is a Parahuman. Known to employ mercenaries which have been implicated in a number of operations generally leaving few traces.' That was basically it. The thread the description linked to was long and full of speculation but very short on any real information, she found after a brief skim. Putting the phone down she thoughtfully went back to finishing her lunch, all the time watching the distant figure.
When he got up from his desk, stretched, and took his mask off to scratch his nose after having made certain the door was shut, she carefully memorized his face while wondering why she had a vague feeling she'd seen him somewhere before quite a while ago…
Eventually she looked at her watch, then drank her remaining tea, took it and her plate back for the server who smiled at her, nodded back, and left. It was an interesting side quest but not currently important she decided, though she was quite curious. And the smell of blood in a room under the probably-Coil's office was a touch concerning… It would keep for now though.
Walking back to the pet shop she could sense a familiar person approaching it from the other direction. Rounding the corner she waved. Lucy, who she'd bumped into in the shop a couple of times now, waved back with a smile. Pausing at the door for the slightly older girl to catch up, Taylor said, "Let me guess. Lunch time at Arcadia?"
"Yeah." Lucy grinned. "It's only ten minutes walk from here, so it's good exercise, and I wanted to get some more treats for Newell."
Taylor chuckled and held the door open then followed the half-Asian girl inside, Mike looking up from the laptop he was typing on and smiling at them both. "Hi, girls," he said, putting the thing to one side and turning to face them directly. "Back again."
"Yep. Wanted some more of those Family-brand snacks," Lucy replied brightly. "He loves them and his scales really get colorful. He's starting to get more active as the weather warms up finally."
Mike nodded, grinning. "They do like it warm, yeah. Hi, Taylor. You ready for another purchase yet?"
"I'm still deciding what I want next and setting up the environments but it's going well, thanks," Taylor responded. "I wanted to have a look around again if you don't mind."
"Help yourself," he invited with a wave of his hand at the store. "You're always welcome. Call me if you need anything."
"Thanks," she smiled. Watching for a moment as Lucy grabbed a few bags of the lizard treats, she turned and walked back into the part of the store she enjoyed browsing. Each time she looked at one of the arthropods she got more ideas.
A minute or two later she felt Lucy walk over to stand next to her, watching the other girl through the eyes of the tarantula in the tank she was peering into. "He's a big hairy one isn't he?" Lucy said with a small shiver. "I don't mind bugs but that thing is kind of big for comfort."
"He's mostly harmless though," Taylor replied, smiling. "Not really toxic unless you're allergic. The hairs can irritate the skin, which apparently isn't fun, but he's not particularly dangerous. A black widow is much worse and they definitely exist in the wild around here."
Lucy looked at her, then around the shop slightly nervously. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I've seen them." Taylor grinned. "We're safe in here though."
She didn't mention that there was a black widow in the attic of the shop right at that moment… It was fine where it was and doing no harm to anyone.
And explaining how she knew the fact would only raise questions she didn't have answers to she wanted to go into, after all.
"That one is amazing," Lucy said a moment later, having moved to look into another tank. In it was a very pretty mantis, in shades of white through to pink. "Orchid mantis," she read from the small card Mike put on all the tanks, listing the scientific name and various other information. "Wow. I can't believe an insect can be that pretty."
"What about butterflies?" Taylor asked. "And some moths are amazing."
"Well… yes, I suppose you're right. I like butterflies," Lucy chuckled. "Point to you."
"Those crabs are cool too," Taylor added, indicating one of the tanks in the tropical marine section a few feet away. "They're not insects but they are arthropods, so they're kind of the same." Lucy grinned again, nodding.
"OK, fine, some of these are really cool. Just don't ask me to have a black widow or that thing next to my bed."
"Fair enough." Taylor laughed. "What about a scorpion? I like Impy."
"Who's Impy?" Lucy asked, frowning.
"You called that scorpion Impy?" Mike asked from behind them, having approached a moment earlier. He started laughing helplessly while Taylor sighed. "Girl, you need help coming up with names. If you get a crab will you call it 'Crabby?'" Lucy began giggling now, making Taylor pout, although she was rather amused.
"You're just like my dad, he's always said I shouldn't be allowed to name things," she mock-grumped with a huff, folding her arms.
"Man's not wrong by the sound of things," Mike snorted, looking highly amused. "How is… Impy… doing?" The corner of his mouth twitched as he said the name and Lucy turned away to hide a smile.
"Really well," Taylor replied cheerfully. "I need some more crickets, actually. She's got a good appetite."
"Excellent, that means you're looking after her properly," he smiled. "Glad to hear it." The door opened behind him and he looked over at the couple who had just entered and were curiously inspecting the interior of his store. "Sorry, customers. I'd better go deal with them."
Lucy and Taylor chatted for a while as they walked around the various enclosures looking at the inhabitants, a lot of which were looking back unknown to the former. Taylor found it kind of funny and wondered what the other girl would say if she realized. Eventually they both finished, Taylor bought her crickets, and Lucy waited for her at the door. "See you around, Taylor," she said having checked the time on her phone. "I'd better get back or they'll be annoyed. Good luck with that home schooling thing."
"It's going well. Who knows, I might end up in Arcadia when everything settles down," Taylor replied, smiling a little.
"That would be nice. If you do, I'll show you around." Lucy smiled back, then turned and walked away, her hands in her pockets and her hood pulled up since it had started raining a little while they were inside. Watching her go Taylor thought that the other girl was becoming a friend and wondered if she would join her in Arcadia. Her path led her back to the main road, so she headed that way, sensing Lucy moving out of her range towards Arcadia.
Just as the other girl had nearly vanished from her senses, she notice three people lurking around a corner just ahead of Lucy. Even as she wondered what they were up to, since from what she could see they were all wearing tattered coats and hats and gave off the impression of not being entirely law abiding, one of them lunged at Lucy as she passed the end of the loading dock they had huddled under the cover of out of the rain. "Fuck," Taylor snarled, immediately turning and running rapidly after her proto-friend. Was this going to happen every time she came into the city center? First those fucking E88 assholes, now whoever these dicks were…
Not running flat out as she didn't want to make it obvious she wasn't entirely stock as far as human performance went, although making good time, Taylor had covered about half the distance to Lucy when she suddenly saw something she was not expecting. "Holy crap!" she muttered, still running, but keeping watch too. A lot of her attention was focused on the other girl and what she saw through many little eyes was impressive indeed.
The asshole who grabbed Lucy had demanded money, while threatening her with a switchblade. She'd yanked herself out of his grasp, spun on one foot with an ease that made it clear she knew exactly what she was doing and no hesitation at all, while the other foot lifted to a remarkable angle and caught him under the chin so hard he actually came clear of the ground. By the time he'd started to drop again, obviously entirely unconscious, she'd caught the knife he'd reflexively dropped in one hand and leaped sidewise as the second mugger swung a crowbar at her with a curse. Even as Taylor rounded the corner and dashed into the loading dock Lucy had slashed that guy's arm with her acquired weapon, laying it open to the bone halfway up the forearm and making him scream in agony.
The third one, who had been watching open-mouthed, was fumbling a small pistol out of his coat when Taylor laid him out flat with a punch to the throat, pulling her blow massively and hoping she hadn't just snapped his neck like a twig. He dropped, gagging horribly, and she kicked his hand hard enough she felt at least one bone break but sending the small snub-barreled revolver skittering across the wet tarmac under a car on the other side of the road. She then slammed her foot into the back of the left knee of the one Lucy was dealing with, making him scream and fall over. Lucy took the opportunity thus presented to kick him in the head, which made him stop making noises.
Whirling to face her, Lucy paused, lowering the knife she was holding in a defensive pose with her other arm lifted to strike out. "Taylor?" she asked, sounding surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I heard something odd and wasn't sure what it was so I investigated," Taylor replied, shading the truth rather a lot but not entirely wrongly. "Are you OK?"
"I'm fine, yeah," the girl replied, straightening up. She looked around at the muggers. The one she'd kicked in the chin was still, the one she'd slashed was dribbling blood on the ground fairly freely although not to the point of him being at much risk, apparently unconscious too, and the one Taylor punched was twitching a little but breathing reasonably freely, obviously not prepared to resume hostilities. "How about you? What did you do to him?" She pointed at the third mugger with the looted knife.
"Punched him in the throat. Seems to have worked," Taylor explained. "How the hell did you take out the other two like that?"
Lucy grinned a touch hysterically. "I know kung fu," she said with a somewhat wild laugh before dropping the knife and grabbing Taylor in a hug. Taylor could feel her shivering. Putting her arms around the other girl, she shook her head a little before reaching for her phone and calling 911.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"So I came around the corner there and these three idiots were getting a beatdown from my friend," Taylor explained to the cop, waving at the three men wearing handcuffs, one of them having his arm bandaged and complaining loudly about it. "She took out those two, I punched the last guy in the throat because he had a gun and she had her back to him. It's under that car over there."
Nodding as he made notes, the cop motioned to his partner, pointing to the car in question. Moments later, having bent down and peered under it, the second cop came back with the pistol between thumb and forefinger, looking at it. "Crappy .38, but dangerous even so," the first one said with a glance at the weapon. "Lethal at close range, definitely." He turned back to Taylor and Lucy. The former was rubbing her hands together as if they were cold. "OK. I've got your details, we'll call you if we need any more, but these guys have done this at least four times in the last two weeks so believe me they're not going anywhere. Last victim nearly died. We've been looking for them for a while. The gun and the knife are enough to get them out of our hair for some time."
"Thank you, officer," Taylor replied calmly. She glanced at Lucy who was staring at the man she'd given a fairly convincing demonstration of why knives could be dangerous to. "Will there be any problem with what Lucy did?"
"Self defense. He deserved anything that you did to him considering he came at you with a lethal weapon," the man replied, shaking his head. "Law's perfectly clear on that. He should be happy he's alive, the idiot. Some people would have stuck it in his eye." Curiously, he studied Lucy, who was a good foot shorter than Taylor. "How did you learn to do that sort of thing, Miss, if you don't mind me asking?"
The other girl laughed a little unevenly. "I've been taking martial arts lessons since I was about six or seven. Kung fu and karate. But this is the first time I've ever been forced to react like that. My teacher will be pleased I didn't waste time panicking then lecture me on situational awareness again…" She sighed faintly. The cop looked mildly amused and somewhat impressed. "I didn't have time to think, I just acted. Guess all those practice fights and competitions really helped."
"Looks like it, yeah," the cop agreed. He examined Taylor. "And you? You a martial artist too?"
"No. I grew up in the docks, we just punch things around there," she assured him, making him laugh. "His throat was right there and Dad always said a good shot to the throat will put most people off their game."
"Not wrong there," the second cop chuckled. "You could have killed him if you hit harder though. Bear that in mind."
"I will. Next time I might go for the nuts. That's safer, right?" She smiled innocently at him.
Both cops winced hard and Lucy started giggling.
"...Yeesss…" The second cop shook his head. "I'm almost feeling sorry for the assholes now."
"I'm not," his colleague muttered, putting his notebook away, then handing each of them a card. "Please give those to your parents and if they've got any questions or need a copy of the report, get them to call us."
"Sure," Taylor told him, taking the card and pulling out her wallet, which she put it into. Lucy put hers into her pocket with a nod as well.
Looking at her phone she sighed. "I'm so late for math it's not funny. Mr Anderson isn't going to be happy."
"You've got a pretty good excuse though," Taylor pointed out, as she watched the three muggers get loaded amid a lot of swearing into a police van that had arrived shortly after the EMTs finished patching up the cut one. She was mildly surprised by just how many vehicles were now present. Apparently this sort of thing in the middle of the well off areas of the city, mere blocks from the Boardwalk, attracted a lot more attention that it probably would have around where she lived. Her dad would likely agree based on things he'd said over the years.
"Yeah, I guess so," Lucy agreed, pulling the card out to look at again then returning it. "God. What a pain in the ass. Stupid muggers."
"That does tend to be a thing." Taylor smiled at Lucy's expression. The cops watched them for a second then the second one went back to his car.
"You girls need a ride?" the remaining one asked. "Arcadia, right?"
About to demur, Taylor glanced at Lucy, who looked slightly beseechingly at her. Apparently the other girl didn't want to be alone right now, which was fair enough really. "Yeah, thanks," she replied instead. She could catch a bus from near Arcadia as easily as from the stop she'd been aiming for and Lucy probably needed the company.
"Fine, hop in and we'll drop you off," the officer said, turning and leading the way to the car. He opened the back door and waved them in. Both entered, then looked around.
"I've never been in a cop car before," Lucy commented with a wry grin. "Never thought I would be either."
As the vehicle started, then pulled away, Taylor laughed. "Someone I knew claimed I would end up in one, but she was a bitch and is more likely to," she replied, momentary sadness about Emma's betrayal flowing through her. She'd avoiding thinking much about her former friend for weeks now and firmly pushed the memories back, not wanting to have that mindset return. Her life was different now, better in all ways, and she was damned if she was going to let Emma and Sophia, and to a lesser extend Madison, intrude on it again. "Long story though."
The short ride, under a mile and a half, brought them to Arcadia High School. Stopping outside the main entrance, the cop got out and opened the door, allowing them to exit. "There you go. Try to avoid muggers if you can, but good job, both of you." He smiled a little as they both nodded. "See you around." Slamming the rear door he got back in and the vehicle drove off. Both of them waved, then turned to examine the school, where a handful of students were watching them curiously, having apparently been outside for some reason.
"Free period," Lucy explained, when she saw Taylor looking. "We get a two or three of them a week and some people use them for study, some go to the library, or into town, or just hang around outside talking to friends or on the phone. There's some sort of phone blocking tech inside, most phones don't work there except at lunch when they turn it off."
"Oh, right, I heard something about that."
Sighing deeply, Lucy straightened her clothes, firmed her expression, and drew herself up apparently ready for battle. "Guess I have to go and explain why I didn't come back on time."
"Want me to come as a witness?" Taylor offered, curious to see the inside of the place and willing to support the other girl. Lucy relaxed with a sudden look of relief at her.
"Oh, god, I didn't know how to ask. Will you? Please? It would help so much." She gazed beseechingly at Taylor who snorted with a suppressed giggle.
"Sure, or I wouldn't have offered."
"Thank you so much, Taylor," Lucy replied, smiling widely. She turned and led the way inside the school to where a classroom was just in the process of disgorging a gaggle of eager young minds, many of whom looked curiously at Taylor and winced when they saw Lucy.
"He's kind of annoyed," one of the girls whispered as she passed. "Good luck." She hurried on her way when a tall sandy-haired man came out of the classroom, spotted Lucy, and gave her a long look.
"Miss Cheung. I assume you have a good reason for your non-appearance?"
"Um…"
"She does," Taylor put in, seeing Lucy was a little hesitant and looking for the right words. The teacher was a rather imposing man and he didn't look entirely pleased.
"And you are? I don't recognize you, young lady."
"Taylor Hebert, sir," she replied politely. "Lucy got mugged. I was there too."
He gazed at her, then Lucy, who nodded. "Ah. I see. In that case, please come in and tell me what happened." He waved both of them into the classroom and listened to the story, which took long enough that the bell rang for the next period before Lucy finished. "Ignore that, I'll give you a pass," he said at when this happened.
When Lucy had told the entire thing, backed up by Taylor, and even shown him the cop's business card, he sighed and nodded. "All right. I'm sorry you both went through that. And I'm glad you were unhurt. Please consider running next time, if there is one. But well done under the circumstances." Retrieving a booklet of preprinted passes from his desk he quickly filled one in and handed it over. "Show Mr Foyle this, please. Don't worry, there won't be a problem." As Lucy took it with a nod, he turned to Taylor.
"At a guess you're a former Winslow student?"
"I am, yes."
"How are you finding the home schooling?"
"It's not too hard, really. I finished pretty quickly today and came into the center to do some work in the library." She plucked the strap of the backpack she had slung over one shoulder. "Took some books back, got some more out, then bumped into Lucy at the pet shop."
"Ah. The famous iguana." He grinned when Lucy flushed slightly. "We are aware of him."
Taylor laughed, feeling it was possible the other girl talked about her pet quite a lot…
"What are you studying?" he queried with interest.
"Computer design right now, some biology and chemistry too."
He seemed quite intrigued. "For any particular reason?"
"Mostly personal interest," she replied. "I like learning new things."
"Indeed. A fine attitude. If you should find yourself here when this debacle is finally resolved, I think you'll enjoy it." He glanced up at the wall clock. "Well, you'd better run along, Miss Cheung. It was nice to meet you, Miss Hebert. Good luck with your studies."
"Thanks." They left the classroom and paused outside. After a moment, Taylor gravely held out her hand. Just as gravely Lucy shook it.
"Miss Cheung. Until our next glorious adventure."
"Miss Hebert. I suppress my anticipation with difficulty."
A moment passed, then they grinned at each other. "Stay safe, Lucy."
"You too, Taylor." With a wave, Lucy hurried off and Taylor made her way back to the entrance. A few minutes later she was waiting for the bus a couple of hundred yards away, planning out her next set of experiments when she got to her warehouse.
She had so many ideas to try.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Yes!" Taylor danced around in a circle, all eight feet tapping on the floor. The entire warehouse interior was illuminated an ominous deep red, the light emanating from her drider abdomen which was glowing scarlet. "I cracked it!" She was extremely pleased. It had taken quite a lot of reading about how fluorescence and bioluminescence worked but finally she'd managed to persuade her power to do what she wanted. Looking over her shoulder she tweaked the internal structure of the light organs, grinning like an idiot when she succeeded in making the color slide smoothly from deep red to deep violet in nearly a continuous spectrum. "Fantastic. Now, can I…" she concentrated on the effect she wanted, then beamed when she started producing a pure white light that easily outshone her LED lanterns.
"Wonderful. Full RGB. I'm a gamer accessory." She laughed with the sheer delight of working out something that had been stumping her for days. It opened up all sorts of wonderful possibilities.
Amusing herself for a while producing a whole series of different color effects, she finally left her abdomen gently cycling through the rainbow and moved onto her next experiment. "Right then. Let's see what this can do." Scuttling over to the scrap pile she hunted through it for the right materials, settling for a thick sheet of steel that had a row of rivet holes down one side, the other being jagged and torn. It looked like it had been part of some large round tank at some point in the distant past, and was around three quarters of an inch thick and about six by four feet. Picking it up she propped it up against one of the larger pieces of scrap, some sort of old engine block, then studied it for a moment. Finally nodding she looked down at herself. "OK. Looks good."
She'd recreated her hybrid exoskeleton using a carefully designed crab and scorpion mix over her entire upper body, the end result being in her view pretty good. A deep blue-black, similar to Impy's color, but slightly shinier, all her joints having sliding plates reinforcing the areas that in a real crab had exposed cartilage. Her head was a modified hornets, with eyes that she'd upgraded using some tricks she'd learned from the study of the crabs she'd caught over the weekend. That had yielded some really impressive improvements in low light vision although she still wanted to get some moths to compare the results. And she could already see how to improve on what she'd created as a first attempt.
Her power felt like it was watching with an open mouth, she thought with an internal grin. Several times during the last few days she'd hit that sort of wall, which she'd powered through with sheer will, each time finding it slightly easier. And each time feeling that the thing that lived at the back of her head was looking more and more confused.
The end result was well worth the effort in her opinion. And if this new exoskeleton worked as well as she thought it would, she could use it for any other form and get a decent boost to durability, which might come in useful sooner or later.
Now, taking a stance near the big plate of steel, she drew her fist back, aiming at the center of it, then snapped her arm out hard. The gonging sound that resulted echoed through the entire building and made dust fall from the rafters. Taylor looked at where her arm was buried elbow-deep in the steel and grinned. It had gone through as easily as her stinger did when she tried the first time, even though it wasn't nearly as sharp. Pulling her arm back with a scraping noise she inspected the carapace covering it, finding only a little bit of metal shavings and no meaningful damage at all. And it hadn't hurt even a little.
Pleased, she looked around for something tougher to try. Ten minutes later she'd made several more holes in increasingly thick chunks of steel and shattered another smaller old engine block like it was made of glass when she hit it a little too hard.
"Well, I can certainly put this down as a good result," she told herself as she walked back to her notebook and wrote down the findings and conclusions. Things were going very well.
Tapping the next item on the list, she thought for a bit, then nodded. "Yeah. That's something I need to check."
She'd done some reading and worked out that it was possible that technically her venom seemed to share some characteristics with something called 'piranha fluid', so named because it ate everything. It was concentrated hydrogen peroxide mixed with an acid, normally sulfuric, and was both an extremely powerful oxidizer and a hellishly good acidic substance. Presumably there was also something added that was the actual venom part and she didn't have the faintest idea what that actually was or how to find out without knowledge and resources she didn't have, but whatever it was seemed insanely toxic based on what had happened to Hookwolf. The carrier part would probably have done the job even without the toxic payload, she thought, but it had certainly put a stop to him pretty damned fast.
Taylor had a shrewd idea that the acid, assuming she was right about her venom, was probably something a lot stronger than mere sulfuric acid. That stuff corroded iron, sure, but nothing like as fast as she'd seen it work. So whatever it was, it was probably pretty toxic in itself, and highly corrosive even without the peroxide. But it most likely wasn't a super oxidizer, and she was curious to see if she was correct.
So she'd been trying to work out how to make her venom glands produce just one part of the whole chemical cocktail. Being able to spray something that was like an incendiary fluid without the stupidly massive toxic risk seemed like an interesting experiment even if she wasn't sure what she'd do with it. Same thing with a super acid.
Her experiments in using different insect and arachnid venoms, even in the boosted forms she ended up with, had given her some ideas about how to proceed and now she started seriously working on a solution that worked. Making copious notes as she tried one method after another with rather mixed results, she kept working for over three hours. At one point she managed to produce something that flat out exploded when she cautiously sprayed a tiny amount on the floor, blowing her head over multiple heels some twenty feet and surprising the hell out of her. Picking herself up she'd stared at the crater in the old concrete and wondered what on earth she'd managed to produce.
It was certainly pretty powerful whatever it was.
So she'd made notes on how she'd done it so she could recreate the result at some point, then moved on.
Another outcome had been a burst of actual flame, like something from a war movie involving a flamethrower. Hopping around yipping as fire dribbled out of her ass, she finally extinguished it. Lightly singed but unharmed she made another note, writing rather hard. That one she wasn't planning on revisiting because it was both embarrassing and highly dangerous in her view. Super toxins were one thing, burning the house down was something altogether different. Especially at point blank range…
Finally, though, she started seeing progress. A lot of thought after the last failure had made her back up a few steps then try a different approach. Her power was making suggestions here and there, seeming invested now in the whole thing, and between the two of them they changed the innards of the venom system quite a bit.
"I think that might do it," she mumbled, concentrating on a very subtle change. After a couple more seconds she nodded. "Yeah. Let's see what that does."
What it did was produce a liquid that hissed on the floor, smoked, and made all the organic material present suddenly burn with a brilliant yellow flame and a lot of smoke. The small conflagration died down as fast as it had started leaving a bleached patch of concrete that looked like someone had spend an hour cleaning it with a wire brush. Bending down she poked it with a clawed finger, finding the concrete itself basically intact. "Interesting," she said slowly. "I think that might have actually worked."
Finding a piece of wood she sprayed more fluid in it, watching with satisfaction as it immediately burst into intense flames. Again, the burn rate was ridiculously quick, suggesting the presence of a very powerful oxidizer. Hydrogen peroxide of a particularly high concentration seemed very likely to her based on her chemistry textbooks. She got the same results with every piece of plastic she could find, hemp rope, some old leather, a pair of PVC gloves she'd brought, paper, and a piece of ancient rubber hose. Anything organic burst into flames within seconds, some taking a little longer than others, such as the leather, but it all did the same thing in the end.
"Cool," she said in satisfaction, watching the latest test gutter out. "Or not cool. Very hot. Still cool though."
Having made that breakthrough she was soon able to produce the other major component on demand, this clearly being a stupidly powerful acid of some sort. It ate an impressive hole in the concrete in moments, although not quite as quickly as the original venom had done, and made a real mess of every sort of metal she could find in the scrap pile. Copper, aluminum, stainless steel… All of it dissolved quite readily. She even found it would seriously damage glass when she located an old beer bottle that looked like it had been there since the middle of the last century and tested it. That made her wonder with some incredulity if the acid was some sort of fluorine based one. It seemed crazy but she wasn't aware of much that would dissolve glass.
No wonder Hookwolf had flopped around like an electrocuted trout. She was surprised yet again that he'd lived long enough for the PRT to find him at all, really. Anyone without the Nazi idiot's regeneration power would have died in seconds.
Shivering a little at how easily she could have accidentally killed that fucking mugger, she resolved yet again to try to either figure out how to produce a venom several orders of magnitude less lethal, or simply make damn sure she never stung anyone and used any of what she currently had available on them. Unless she really wanted them dead in a very spectacular manner.
Even the enhanced wolf spider venom she'd used on that rat was much too dangerous. This stuff was off the scale.
On the other hand she wasn't planning on getting into any situation where she needed to sting people, to death or just to agony, after all. This was all because she was curious not because she intended to use it. But as her dad had said, they lived in an uncertain and unsafe world and in her view it was best to be prepared for the unexpected. She just had some really weird ways to do that now…
A moment later she felt something at the extreme end of her range, the insects five hundred yards away detecting a human-sized body moving slowly more or less at an angle to the direction she was from it. Extinguishing her bioluminescence immediately, Taylor dashed over to her temporary work area and turned off the LED lamps too in case anyone had seen the light from outside. She'd had a few visitors to the area since her dad found this place for her but so far no one had approached closer than about two hundred yards, and that had turned out to be some homeless person scavenging for aluminum cans from what she'd seen. He'd left half an hour later clutching about a dozen of them.
The figure moved around somewhat erratically while she watched through her insects, wondering what the guy was after. She could see it was a man, probably in his mid twenties, wearing ragged clothes. After a few minutes he ducked into the remains of a smaller building, one about the size of her house, and started moving things around a little. She realized after a bit that he was just arranging somewhere to sleep, presumably being one of the homeless people the city had far too many of. As she watched, he unlimbered a rather sad sleeping bag from a ratty backpack and laid it on a pile of old cardboard as an improvised mattress, then started making a small fire in a pot with a broken handle he found in the detritus.
Taylor sighed faintly. She'd seen similar people most of her life, and felt bad for them. But there wasn't a lot she could do as much as she didn't like seeing anyone in that state. She didn't have lots of money, or any way to give them somewhere to live, or jobs. Her powers weren't going to fix that sort of problem.
What she could do was make sure all the bugs in his immediate vicinity moved away from him, and give them an order to stay away. At least he wouldn't get bitten by a spider or anything. And tomorrow he'd probably have moved on. They didn't tend to stick around in one place very long because there were too many other people in similar straights that preyed on people just as badly off as this guy was.
But that meant her experiments for tonight were over. She couldn't risk the noise and lights attracting unwanted attention, as unlikely as it was. Checking the time she found it was just after midnight so it was probably time to stop anyway. She could try the other things she'd put on the list another day.
Packing everything up, she put it all into her pouches, and was soon squeezing out through the hole in the wall as the super-hornet. Climbing up the wall onto the roof she looked thoughtfully in the direction of the homeless guy, before reverting to the hornet-girl and rummaging in one of her pouches. Removing the last of her cash, about twenty bucks, she switched back then lifted off.
A few minutes later she was flying home, while behind her the homeless guy was staring at two fives and a ten that had fluttered down just outside the doorway of the old building he was squatting in, wondering where the hell they'd come from. And what that strange deep droning sound had been…
It didn't stop him hastily retrieving them and tucking them safely away though.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"I'm proud of you, Taylor," her dad told her when she explained what her day had brought. "Upset because you keep finding yourself in these situations, but you handled it well." He looked at the card she'd given him, shook his head, gave her a hug, and went to bed. Taylor did likewise, thinking about that underground base and the face of the man she'd seen while trying to recall where she'd come across it before.
