"Hi, Kurt," Taylor said, smiling at the man she'd known her whole life, an old friend of her parents.
"Hey, Taylor. Done with your schoolwork already?" The heavily muscled man joined her at the side of the wharf she'd been standing on, leaning on the railing that surrounded the end where the ships tied up. Two trawlers and a somewhat smaller tender vessel were moored there, rocking in the light breeze while the waves made slapping sounds on their hulls and the pilings. It was fairly chilly but definitely warming up now. He put his gloved hands on the scarred wood and leaned over to look at the bay water about twelve or so feet down, the tide currently coming in. It would peak about three in the afternoon, which was still some hours away, she knew.
"Going to be a fairly high one today," he added, straightening up and facing her. "Around ten feet or so."
"Yeah, I got the work done," she replied, answering his initial question. "I was taking a break, walking around and exploring. I haven't been down here for nearly two years."
He chuckled faintly. "I remember. You fell in one summer and Danny was really worried, then pretty annoyed."
"I slipped," she laughed. "I was fine, I can swim well, and I got out by myself easily enough."
"Good thing it was summer and high tide." He peered over the edge again, then at her. "Low tide it's quite a drop and there's all sorts of old crap down there you wouldn't enjoy landing on."
"Fair enough. I won't dive in at low tide then," she giggled.
"I wouldn't suggest swimming in the bay in February even at high tide. Damn cold water." The man shivered comically. "And you're a skinny thing, you'd freeze to death."
These days that almost certainly wasn't true, she thought with an inner grin, but she wasn't going to mention that… Her crab boosts had turned out to make her pretty cold tolerant and she was somewhat curious to see what it might be like wandering around underwater, but that wasn't something she was going to do in daylight. No sense pushing her luck.
"Don't worry, I'm not planning on jumping off the wharf," she told him. "I was just watching all the life down there. There's more of it than you'd think really."
Both of them looked down, the water being shallow enough and clear enough that one could easily see crabs moving around on the bottom, anemones on the pilings, the ones below the waterline flowering into a mass of tentacles while the ones above were glistening lumps, and even a few small fish swimming about. He nodded a little. "Yeah. Considering how much pollution has been dumped into the bay it's surprisingly thriving. Not as many fish as there used to be twenty years ago but on the other hand a lot less people going after them these days so I guess it kind of balances out." He pointed at a small boat chugging past, "Some people still fishing though." Both of them waved, the quite old but still powerful white-haired man in the stern of the boat a hundred yards away waving back, then hastily grabbing for the beer bottle he nearly knocked off the transom into the water. Distant swearing reached them quite clearly over the sound of the small diesel engine and the cries of the seabirds.
Both Taylor and Kurt grinned at the sight. With one last wave, the old sailor went on his way. "That idiot's going to drown himself one day," Kurt grumbled in a good natured manner. "Silly old bastard."
"I like him."
"Oh, everyone likes him, Taylor," Kurt assured her, looking amused. "Doesn't mean he's not crazy. Some of the stories he's come up with…"
Hearing a shout from behind him, he looked back towards the more populated parts of the union facility, then waved back to the guy who'd called out. "Gotta go. Take care, kid. Glad the work's going well. You'll get into a good school I'm sure, once they figure out all that crap with Winslow." Clapping her on the shoulder, he turned to leave. "Don't fall in," he advised over his shoulder with a grin.
"Not planning on it, Uncle Kurt," she assured him, answering with one of her own. With a wave he walked off rapidly leaving her to her own devices. Watching him diminish into the distance she smiled fondly for a moment, then went back towards the shore, her footsteps clunking on the tarred wooden planks and echoing under the wharf, mixing with the sound of waves and various creaking noises as they passed underneath. The smell of old tar, salt, machinery, and mud was an evocative one to her, something she'd grown up with all her life, and as natural as the scents of baking bread. Smiling slightly at the memories that came to her as she thought back to times she'd been here with her parents, she wandered slowly along, looking around for anything interesting.
The whole time her power-granted senses were covering a very significant chunk of the yard, the buildings around it, and the bay out some hundreds of yards. She could feel hundreds of thousands of small creatures inside her area, crabs and other marine life in the water, land arthropods elsewhere. Just in the last couple of days a fair number of insects had started emerging from hibernation, adding to the diversity of what she could detect. Ant nests were revving up underground, several colonies of termites off to the west showed signs of activity, quite a large number of various species of wasp were beginning to get ready to start new hives soon… It should have been totally overwhelming to a human mind, she knew that when she considered what she was doing and sensing, but somehow… it wasn't.
Certainly she still didn't want to throw caution to the wind and expand her power to the full extent just yet, but her range was increasing steadily more rapidly as she carefully tested it, and so far nothing bad had happened. The slow approach had definitely helped, she was sure. Her power didn't seem to be quite so convinced but it didn't get a say in it, so it merely sulked slightly and waited.
In only a week or two, she thought as she reached the end of the wharf and turned in the direction away from the city, walking slowly along the cratered ancient concrete surface of the union yard next to the sea wall, she would probably finally reach the limit of her range. Or at least the current limit, as she had the distinct impression that this wasn't actually a limit, it was just a guideline. Or something like that.
All the other times she'd hit a block that seemed to tell her this far but no further she'd just shrugged and stomped right through regardless of what it might think, and saw no particular reason she couldn't keep doing that. Certainly she'd been successful to date, and each breakthrough made the next easier. Her power was definitely finding the whole experience bizarre and seemed utterly baffled as to how she was doing it, but at the same time completely fascinated to see what the result was and where she would take it next. Which was, to her mind, both strange and really funny.
Taylor wondered if that was normal. Did other Parahumans have to threaten their powers into doing useful things? She had no idea and didn't know any other Parahumans to ask, assuming she or they would want to let the other know about their abilities. Perhaps one day she'd manage to find out the answer, but for now she was having a huge amount of fun just experimenting. It seemed a much more effective and rewarding use of her time than running around beating up people in silly costumes.
Although she didn't really regret the single fight she'd been in. Hookwolf had needed to be stopped, and she'd been in the right place at the right time with the correct solution to the problem he presented. Like she'd told her dad, she hadn't enjoyed doing it, but it required doing, and she had no real regret about her actions. Annoyance at being pushed into it, yes, but the act itself?
No. The world was far better off without that murderous lunatic, and she'd be surprised if anyone other than his like-minded friends would disagree. Certainly PHO was full of people celebrating her action, which was definitely peculiar to her still, and the news online and on TV had been quite pleased too. Overall the public seemed fine with a sudden lack of Hookwolf.
She wondered what the PRT made of it. Or her, more accurately. They'd been surprisingly quiet about the whole thing, only stating that a previously unknown Parahuman they had few details on had acted to save the Ward Vista from a lethal super villain attack. No real details had been given as far as she'd seen, at least so far. Perhaps they'd publish something more later, but then they didn't have a lot to go on. She hadn't stuck around to talk to them after all.
Hoping Vista, who was still apparently off duty, was all right, Taylor reached a point where the sea wall had a gap in it, leading to a set of somewhat crumbling concrete steps that ended up at the shore, twenty or so feet from the current water level. At high tide the water covered half the steps, and in a storm could come right through the gap which was why there were provisions made to insert some enormous wooden beams into slots on the sides of it to form a barrier, but right now it was just a flight of stairs. She looked around, seeing no one in the area visually and nothing her insects could detect either. Not that she had any reason to worry about being seen because she wasn't doing anything wrong or weird.
That came later. At least the weird part. Smiling a little, she descended the stairs, stepping onto firm gravel and sand at the bottom. Walking along the foreshore she watched where she put her feet as there were sometimes rotting piles of seaweed hidden under the rough sand, and she knew from personal experience that standing on one of those produced a geyser of reeking fluid that tended to go right up your leg and leave you smelling like you'd been floating face down in the bay for days… She had no wish to have to replace her boots.
After a little walking, and pausing a couple of times to investigate things that were sticking out of the sand, one of which was a rather nice piece of ocean-rounded dark blue glass she wiped clean and put in her pocket, she ended up at a location where an outcropping of rocks protruded from the sand, the far end disappearing under the waves. It was the remnants of where some sort of old boat ramp, probably built in the middle of the eighteen hundreds and originally intended to get small trawlers out of the bay, had been as far as she knew. Made of huge blocks of dark limestone it was covered in seaweed along the bottom four or five feet and she could see thousand of periwinkles on it, along with limpets and a few other such things. Crabs lurked under the edges at the bottom, behind the seaweed, and a couple of deep cracks in the blocks contained tiny tide pools which hosted all sorts of creatures too.
Most of this she could sense as easily as her own fingers, of course. The tiny fish in the pools weren't really something her power seemed interested in, at least not yet although she wasn't sure whether or not she could prod it into that, but the crustaceans, the snails, worms, starfish, all that sort of thing… Oh, yeah, it was fine with them.
She still had no idea what it used as valid criteria for determining whether she could interact with something or not. Originally she'd thought insects, then quite quickly it became clear it was more than that, hence arthropods. But it was fine with anything that might conceivably class as a worm too, then in the exotic pet shop she found it liked crabs, anemones, jellyfish… It was both weirdly selective and weirdly agnostic at the same time as far as animals went. Which was one of the many things about the whole affair that puzzled her, but she wasn't really questioning it, she was just curious about the reasons behind all this.
Stopping next to the rocks, she looked closely at the nearest one, watching the marine snails that were slowly moving around eating the fine layer of algae growing on the surface and leaving a distinct cleaner trail behind them. Mixed in among the slate-gray shells of periwinkles were the lopsided oval cones of the limpets.
That was what she'd come down here to find.
Selecting a nice big one, she gently pulled it off the rock surface, using her power to urge it to let go and overriding the instinctive response of immediately suctioning the shell so tightly to the rock that you'd need a knife to remove it. Turning it over she studied the exposed foot of the creature, small eye stalks wiggling at her as she inspected it.
"You'll do," she told the thing softly. "Don't worry, this won't hurt."
Exerting her power she watched as the limpet vanished from her hand, shell and all, and felt a new library of intriguing life-form information add itself to her existing selection. By now she was practiced enough at the process that it was simple to just basically pull one of her creatures into whatever internal store she had, and she could easily distinguish between them and look at the differences and properties. The whole process was, looked at objectively, ridiculously unlikely she thought as she pondered the new data, but regardless of how crazy it was, it worked.
She still didn't know where the creatures actually went though.
"Another member of the collective," she murmured with a smile. "Resistance is futile." Laughing a little, she selected another one as a comparison, absorbed it too, then as an afterthought did the same to a couple of periwinkles and a tiny starfish. Having admired the view for a moment or two she turned and started walking back. On the way to the steps she found three more pieces of that deep blue glass which she pocketed, and acquired some copepods too, just because they were hopping around on the sand. Soon she was back on the concrete walking back to the main building, waving to occasional people who were busy with various jobs and getting waves back and the odd shout of welcome.
"Hi, Dad," she said when she looked into her dad's office, where he was reading a stack of paperwork with a small frown. "I've finished my work for today. I was planning on heading back to the house." Going into his office she sat down, then pulled one of the pieces of frosted rounded sea glass out of her pocket and handing it to him. "I found some of this on the shore. It's a nice color."
"Bristol blue glass, I think," he said, picking it up and holding it to the light from the window as he inspected it. "Imported from the UK. Quite a lot of it went through here back in the nineteenth century. It was an expensive luxury item, from memory. They made things like vases and other glassware out of it. Probably someone dropped a crate overboard. It could have been washing around on the bottom of the bay for nearly two hundred years."
He added with a smile as she listened, once again impressed by just how much of this sort of thing he seemed to know, "And it's a nice color, yes." He handed the fragment back.
"I've nearly finished this report set for now, and I could give you a ride home," he suggested. "Safer and quicker. We could pick up lunch on the way."
"I'd like that, Dad," she replied without having to consider the question for more than a second or two. She was safe enough now and both knew it, but having to defend herself from some idiot would only cause trouble they didn't need. A ride with her dad would be nice, reminding her of the old days. While they weren't quite back to where they should have been if all the crap of the last few years hadn't happened, their relationship was healing rapidly, so both of them were much happier as a result. He was smiling more, she thought happily, watching as he read the last page of the document he'd been studying, made a few notes, then typed up a quick email. Having sent it, he pushed his chair back and stood, stretching with a small grunt of relief.
"I need to exercise more," he complained mildly. "My back doesn't like sitting in a chair all day these days."
"Old age will get you in the end so I hear," Taylor laughed, making him give her a look which only caused her to laugh more.
"Recall this when you're my age and see if you're laughing then," he grumbled, although in a good natured manner, as he put his coat on. Still giggling she followed him out of his office, waiting as he closed the door then called across the larger area outside, "I'm just going to lunch, Sally. Back in an hour or so."
"OK, Danny, I'll pass it on," the middle aged brown haired woman he'd addressed called back. "Hi, Taylor! School work going well?"
"Yes, thanks, Sally," Taylor replied. "Very well."
"Keep it up." The woman smiled as did she. Walking beside her dad the pair of them made their way outside and were soon bumping along the battered road towards home, talking about various things and feeling generally in a good mood.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"There's been no sightings of the HOUS since the hospital incident," Armsmaster reported as they sat for the daily briefing meeting.
"House?" Deputy Director Renick echoed with a mystified expression. Armsmaster sighed faintly.
"HOUS. H. O. U. S. Hornet Of Unusual Size," he explained with a slight set to his lips suggesting a pained wince. "Blame Kid Win for that one, I'm afraid. He made the suggestion on PHO when the incident became public knowledge and unfortunately the term stuck. Absent any information on a name the creature wishes to be known by, it seems to have become semi-official. Annoyingly."
Renick looked quite amused while Emily sighed and rubbed her temples with her forefingers. The meeting hadn't even started properly yet and this was already happening. "It's a stupid name," she growled. "Come up with something better. We normally manage to do that without too much trouble."
"Normally we're not coming up with names for a hideously dangerous sapient giant insect that can take out someone like Hookwolf in one shot and might not appreciate what we call it," Dauntless pointed out, looking somewhat worried. She turned her head to glare at him, then scanned the rest of the people present. All of them, even Armsmaster, didn't seem to have any rebuttal of his comment. Several of the PRT staff and a couple of the capes visibly agreed but weren't going to go on record as saying so, she could see just from their faces. Sighing once more and wondering what she'd ever done to deserve this she finally nodded.
"Fine. Whatever. What's one more weird problem when we're up to our ass in them already?" she grumbled, folding her hands in front of her. "So no trace of the damned thing?"
"No, not that we can determine," Armsmaster replied. "There have been the usual highly unreliable rumors that always persist surrounding unusual occurrences, but nothing that can be verified at all. And as several of them came from sources in multiple places around the city, and state for that matter, separated in time far too little to be plausible, everyone feels they can be safely discarded."
"Unless there's lots of them flying around out there in the dark!" Assault put in brightly, then ducked as his wife tried to poke him with a pen. "Just trying to be helpful, Puppy! Ow!"
"Stop being helpful," Battery said with asperity. "It's never helpful."
Emily tried very hard to pretend she hadn't heard his suggestion. The mere thought of more than one of those things was horrifying.
She was still having nightmares after the mini-lecture Professor Brooks had delivered on what could be the case, and desperately hoped it wasn't. The entomologist hadn't seemed particularly worried, and if anything somewhat eager to find out more, but he was clearly off his head in that very specific way so many academics she'd met were. Any normal person very much did not want to consider hordes of vast insectoid abominations roaming the countryside…
No news was hopefully good news in this area, really. If the thing had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, she for one wouldn't be too upset.
At least Hookwolf was out of the picture for good, so there was that.
Moving her gaze to Doctor Lorenzo, one of the PRT science division researchers, she asked, "What's the latest on the samples from and analysis of the fight location?"
He sighed a little as he picked up a thick stack of printouts and held it up. "We have a vast amount of data and very little real information, I'm afraid."
"Explain, please." She just knew this was going to be another headache…
Everyone watched as he dropped the reports on the table in front of him then gazed at them in a slightly lost manner before taking a deep breath. "We gathered samples of the road surface, what remained of Hookwolf's blades, and Vista's costume. Photographic evidence was collected for the purposes of hopefully reconstructing the event, along with Vista's testimony," he began professionally, his voice even and calm. "Using the collected evidence we ran chemical tests including mass spectrographic and x-ray diffraction, impact simulation, fracture pattern analysis, and a number of other processes. The results are… highly unusual."
He took another breath as they all waited, turning the pages a couple of times until he found what he was looking for. "Vista stated that the… HOUS… first attacked Hookwolf by ramming it while flying at a velocity she estimated at over eighty miles an hour. Assuming she is correct for the purposes of this argument, and using an approximate mass of the insect of roughly thirty five pounds, itself backed up by information from Panacea, the impact energy was some ten thousand joules, or in the region of seven and a half thousand foot-pounds. There is some margin of error I won't go into, obviously, but that should give an idea of the impact force. It's about three quarters that of a fifty caliber bullet, which while not enormous in absolute terms, is preposterous for an insect to survive. Even one that size. Yet according to Vista it hit then flew away without even pausing, imparting enough energy to knock Hookwolf quite a distance."
"Tough little bastard isn't it?" Assault commented, listening with interest. "Definitely a Brute, especially considering how you'd think an insect would be pretty fragile."
"Many insects are ridiculously durable when their size is taken into account, Assault, but I'd agree it's impressive." Doctor Lorenzo shrugged. "A decent Brute rating is a given. The second attack was quite a lot harder, if Vista's estimate was correct, being at a velocity significantly higher. She thought it was well over a hundred miles an hour on the next pass, which raises the impact energy to nearly seventeen thousand foot-pounds if we assume roughly one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Well past a fifty caliber bullet and analogous to the forces a two hundred pound man wearing a seat belt would experience if he drove a car into a wall at just over forty miles an hour. Survivable, but likely with injuries, broken bones, torn tendons, spinal damage… Most people wouldn't find the outcome favorable."
Turning the page as everyone listened, he went on, "Vista's evidence is backed up by measurements of the gouges on the road surface and the locations where dislodged blades were found, suggesting she was quite accurate in her judgment. Obviously Hookwolf was far tougher than a normal human, being a high rated Brute, and such an impact would be mostly disorientating rather than seriously damaging. We suspect that the initial attack was intended to separate him from Vista to a distance great enough to make a followup, much more lethal, attack pose no risk to her."
"I concur," Armsmaster nodded. "That was the logical conclusion from the reported interaction."
"Indeed. The hornet then gave a verbal warning, and all the evidence we have available suggests that if Hookwolf had backed down at that point he'd have lived." The doctor shrugged once more, just a little. "Of course the man was not known for his predilection towards doing the sensible thing."
Emily couldn't help snorting at the dry tone. He wasn't wrong. Hookwolf had been totally nuts even if you were feeling generous, leaving aside his ideology which itself was far past the point of being repellent.
"Once the time for accepting the offer expired, Hookwolf attempting to kill the hornet in the meanwhile, it used the second attack method, the venom spray, which caused him to fall into a coma within no more than twenty seconds from the eyewitness testimony. We suspect he was unconscious inside ten seconds, in fact, the remaining motion being reflex action from severe neurological trauma interacting with his regeneration. I can assure you that had he not had that power he'd have expired in no more than ten to fifteen seconds." Doctor Lorenzo shook his head. "Even then we know his power couldn't heal the amount of damage he sustained and death occurred within a day and a half. Panacea herself couldn't fix him, assuming she would have agreed to in the first place."
"I guarantee she would not," Armsmaster put in even as Emily found herself thinking the same. "New Wave and the Empire Eighty Eight have a history, and the young woman has a long memory."
"Yeah." Velocity nodded a little. "You do not fuck around with her family then expect her to help you. Girl holds a grudge."
"Who wouldn't where it comes to those bastards?" Battery shook her head. "I can't blame her in the slightest."
"No," Emily said. "I agree. Go on, doctor. Do we know what it used on Hookwolf?"
"Ah. That's where things get very confusing and more than a little worrying," the man replied, flipping pages for a few seconds.
"Like it wasn't both of those things already?" Assault asked with a look of surprise and a slight smile.
"Not to this level, no," the scientist commented, finally locating what he was after. "The analysis of the chemical residue on the road and blade samples shows traces of halogen compounds based on fluorine and chlorine, anomalous quantities of sulfur, evidence of exposure to nearly pure hydrogen peroxide, and a number of what we think are breakdown byproducts of a large number of unprecedentedly complex organic compounds, which defy further analysis but are likely powerful fast acting neurotoxins among other things. The residue suggests to me personally that at least one of these may be some form of thiophosphonate substance I suspect is similar in action to, although much more potent than, nerve agents such as VX. It's not VX, it's far more rapidly acting from the available evidence, and how it remains stable in the presence of everything else we detected is a total mystery. It shouldn't be possible. None of us have the faintest idea what any of the others are as they're all new to science. Thankfully all the residue is now inert."
Emily noticed with a sense of foreboding that both Armsmaster and Miss Militia had nearly stopped breathing. She was feeling faint herself, as she all too easily recognized the term 'VX.' In other words, nerve gas.
Holy fuck.
"Fluorine chemistry?" Armsmaster said in a choked voice a couple of seconds later, after swallowing once or twice. Doctor Lorenzo nodded, his face grim.
"You understand the issue, then."
"Christ." The Tinker looked like he wanted to faint.
"What does that mean?" Assault asked, looking worried. "I know fluorine is nasty, right? But I'm no chemist."
Armsmaster looked at him, then at Lorenzo, who turned to face the red-clad hero. "Fluorine is the lowest mass halogen, and the most reactive. At least it's not radioactive, so we're only dealing with chemistry, not nuclear chemistry, which is about the only way it could be worse. It's bad enough as it is. Anyway, fluorine is chemically the most reactive element there is. It reacts with essentially everything, which in some ways is good, as most of its compounds are extremely stable since it bonds so tightly to other elements. Teflon is a good example of a fluorine-based polymer, and is remarkably non-reactive precisely because fluorine is so reactive. However, many fluorine compounds are not stable, as they still have available fluorine bonds. These compounds are invariably extremely toxic, highly reactive to a level that's terrifying, and generally best avoided entirely."
He looked at the papers in front of him, then back to Assault who had lost his normal slight smile by this point. "The other elements present, specifically sulfur for this particular issue, and their relative ratios, fit appallingly well to one specific chemical compound, called…"
"Fluorosulfuric acid," Armsmaster finished for him, sounding like he was trying not to pass out.
"Exactly. Again, we have absolutely no idea how this is possible, nor how this insect could survive having even the smallest amount of any of these compounds inside it, nor how any of them remain stable, but that's our best guess based on the evidence."
"Fluorosulfuric acid based piranha solution," the Tinker whispered in a lightheaded way.
"What's piranha solution?" Dauntless asked curiously.
"A mixture of an acid with concentrated hydrogen peroxide," Doctor Lorenzo replied. "It should not exist with fluorosulfuric acid. It's an affront to chemistry to even consider the concept. But the evidence does suggest this is the case."
"What does it do?" This time the question came from Velocity.
"Dissolve practically everything," the scientist replied. "Almost instantly. The acid on its own is bad enough. Extremely toxic, viciously corrosive to virtually anything including glass, releases hydrogen fluoride gas when it comes into contact with water which is another nightmare on its own… You do not want to be anywhere near it. Hydrogen peroxide in the concentrations we suspect was present is another massive hazard. It will oxidize nearly instantly anything organic very vigorously indeed. The reaction is highly exothermic and releases enough heat to burst into flames within seconds at most. Mix them together…"
He shuddered. "I don't want to think about what that would do even in small quantities. Dissolve almost anything while setting it on fire at the same time is the least of it. The toxicity is horrific too. Luckily both chemicals break down or react with other compounds quite fast and become effectively inert, but even so, it's not comfortable to consider. The organic toxins appear to degrade very quickly too, possibly due to the heat of the reactions caused by the carrier fluid, becoming inert within a few seconds by our best estimates. And they're almost irrelevant in some ways as the venom would be completely and rapidly lethal without them. With them… Overkill is an understatement."
He slowly shook his head as every single person in the room stared at him in horror. "We have never encountered something quite so lethal from a biochemical standpoint. And we have no idea whatsoever how the insect survives its own venom. Obviously Parahuman abilities are involved but in ways we've not encountered to date anywhere on record."
"So don't let it sting you," Assault said after a long silence, his mouth not quite forming a smile. He sounded somewhat ill.
"Not unless you want to immediately die in agony then explode, no," Doctor Lorenzo replied with a certain amount of black humor.
"Good advice. Everyone remember it." Assault looked around. Emily felt that no one could possibly forget it…
She certainly wouldn't.
"And that fucking thing can spray you with this goddamn hell fluid?" Velocity queried in a faint horrified voice.
"Apparently, yes," the doctor responded. "The literature does note this as a feature of the normally sized examples of that species."
"It's not a feature, it's a bug," Assault mumbled, looking like he was trying to work out whether he should retire. Emily couldn't even bring herself to sigh.
When everyone had come to grips with what he'd told them, he flipped pages again, continuing when he stopped, "The rest of our conclusions are less traumatic and essentially reinforce what was discussed at the initial meeting. I don't believe any of the rest of this changes anything not already concluded, so I won't go into it, although the report is available if required. Our advice would be to ensure that the hornet doesn't have reason to assume it's being threatened, as the results could well be… quite unpleasant. Incidentally an NBC suit wouldn't help. None of them are rated for a chemical cocktail this corrosive." He almost smiled. "I checked."
"So don't upset it either," Battery commented. He nodded agreement.
"That would be inadvisable."
"Great. I hope it's generally well disposed towards people." Her face showed she wasn't all that happy about any of this which wasn't surprising.
"If you're not a murderous Nazi threatening a young girl the limited evidence available suggests you're probably fine, but I'd strongly suggest that attempting to track it to wherever it comes from should be done, if at all, with extreme care," the doctor said as he put all his papers back into a neat stack. "That species of hornet, or at least the naturally occurring species this individual appears to be based on, are known to be quite non-aggressive unless threatened, then they become something of a handful. Hopefully our friend takes after that aspect."
"Hopefully," Emily repeated quietly. "Thank you for the report, Doctor."
"My pleasure, Director." Having successfully brought the mood of the meeting to a level best described as 'dire' he rose, collected his paperwork, and left. Everyone else watched him go then turned to look at each other when the door closed.
Lieutenant Jeffries raised a finger, causing attention to shift to him. "I vote we don't try to capture the HOUS without a very, very good reason."
"Seconded," Assault immediately said, still looking uncommonly worried. "Let's do something safer like challenge Behemoth to arm wrestling."
Even Armsmaster seemed to consider the suggestion for a moment, Emily noticed. Wishing she'd never heard of hornets, regular sized or Unusual, she looked at her tablet, tapping the section covering the report from the science team with a bit more force than warranted. "Moving on," she said after clearing her throat just a bit. "Reaction from the E88 following Hookwolf's death?"
"Muted," replied Armsmaster, coming out of what looked like deep thought and looking at her. "The information available is that Kaiser is, of course, considering a reprisal operation but he's rather stymied by not knowing at whom or where such a thing should be aimed."
"Yeah, we've been trying the usual sources and there's not a lot of real information available so far," Jeffries added. "He's really angry, but has nothing to aim the anger at. Everyone's apparently been ordered to keep their eyes open for the HOUS but not to do anything without checking with him first. I guess he's smart enough to realize that if it could take out Hookwolf, there aren't many people who'd stand a chance against it."
"I've checked with some people I know," Assault put in. "Stormtiger and Alabaster, based on what I've heard, might be thinking about trying their own little operation if they can find the hornet. Kaiser told them not to, but they're idiots and were friends of Hookwolf's from what I was told. So that might end badly…" He shrugged. "Nothing of value will be lost, I suppose."
"I wonder if that hellish brew the thing can spray would do the job on Alabaster?" Jeffries thought out loud.
"I don't know but he certainly wouldn't enjoy the process of finding out," Armsmaster grunted, studying the tablet he'd just picked up. "If the Empire does decide to act foolishly, we may well find one of our largest problems solves itself quite effectively."
"At the cost of terrifying the public," Emily pointed out, although she was considering the idea and not personally finding too much wrong with it in principle. Minor things like the law aside. Unfortunately simply shooting Nazis on sight was frowned on by the government although in her opinion it should probably be encouraged… Both her grandfathers had fought the bastards in World War II and she was pretty sure that if either was still alive they'd have long since bagged a few more of the local version, laws or no laws.
"It might not go immediately lethal if they do decide to poke the sleeping hornet," Miss Militia said rather hopefully. "Its brute rating is high enough that it could probably take out several of the Empire Parahumans without requiring that awful venom."
"True. Assuming it thinks that's sufficient. It might not," Velocity put in. "And it's a damn quick way to finish the fight."
"With luck we won't find out any time soon," Emily finally said, having considered the options. "If we can establish a dialog with the thing we might persuade it to avoid further fatalities. But that will have to wait until it pops up again somewhere. For all we know it's left the city entirely." She sighed. "Do we have any further ideas on where it came from or what it even is? I'm not convinced any more that Case 53 is viable, and Changer seems less and less likely too. Which worries me, because a Biotinker being involved moves up the list higher than I'm happy about."
"No, Director, we've so far not been able to narrow down its origins to anything not covered in the original meeting," Armsmaster replied after glancing around the table. "The results from the Thinkers available didn't aid us very much, being more confusing than helpful, and without any more interactions with the HOUS we're very limited in what we can conclude. The list we derived at the first meeting and the order of probability remains unchanged for now."
"Damn. All right, I suppose that can't be helped." Emily tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. In the end she shook her head. "In that case let's put the whole mess to one side until something else happens, which we all know it probably will, this being Brockton Bay, and move on. Lung. What's the current status of the ABB? We haven't heard from him for a couple of weeks now and that's something else that worries me. It's never ideal when he goes quiet for long…"
Shortly they were discussing Lung and his gang, attempting once more to preempt yet another disaster, which the city seemed to have a near-constant flow of, even leaving aside the ongoing and annoying legal shenanigans that were a constant background to everything else at the moment.
It was a tedious and thankless task with no obvious end in sight but it was their job so they kept at it. After all, there was no one else to do the work.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Missy looked up from the tablet she was browsing PHO on at the tap on the door, which opened to reveal a familiar pair of people in costume. Clockblocker and Kid Win, or Dennis and Chris, depending on who you were, came in and the PRT trooper outside pulled the door closed behind them. Once they were unobserved, both boys took their helmets off, a pair of smiling faces meeting her gaze. "Hi, Missy," Dennis said as he came over. "We were patrolling and thought we'd patrol in this direction so we could see how you're doing." Sitting on the edge of the bed and grinning at her, Missy herself in a chair near the frosted window which prevented anyone outside seeing in. Chris took the other chair. "So, how you doing?"
She laughed slightly at the eager expression of inquiry he put on, along with the eyebrow waggle. "Not too bad, Dennis. Still tired, a little. More up here I guess." She tapped her forehead with one finger while she put the tablet on the side table, then leaned back and sighed. "Still can't stop thinking about what happened."
The two boys exchanged a somewhat concerned glance. "All joking aside, Missy, are you all right?" Chris asked quietly. Dennis was watching her with an usually serious expression present. She shrugged.
"Honestly? Yes, and no. Yes, I'm getting over it. Or I guess I'm learning to deal with it which isn't the same thing. No, I'm not over over it. I'll probably never manage that."
"Over Macho Grande? I'll never be over Macho Grande," Dennis hissed comically, looking paranoid for a moment. Despite herself Missy giggled. More seriously, he added, "It's understandable, Missy. You went through one hell of an experience I sure as shit wouldn't want to have. Hookwolf was a vicious killer and the important thing to remember is that you made it. He didn't."
She nodded a little. "I suppose that's one way to look at it, yeah. But…" She shuddered a moment, running her fingers over her chest in remembered pain. Even though she'd heard that your memory of pain was never as bad as the real experience, it was real enough that she woke up sweating a couple of times a night and had to check that she was still intact. Chris watched her fingers with a look of puzzlement that suddenly turned into enlightenment followed by sympathy although he didn't say anything, which she was grateful for. "I remember the fear, and the pain, and the sounds, and the smell. They never mention the smell. Blood, and gunpowder, and torn open guts…"
Her voice faded as both her visitors exchanged glances again, before Dennis got up and moved to squat in front of her. He took both her hands in his and squeezed them comfortingly. "You survived. You're safe. He'll never hurt anyone again, and you did a phenomenal job just avoiding dying, hornet or no hornet. Never let anyone tell you you can't cut it. Especially Sophia. You're much more badass than she can even dream of." He smiled at her with genuine care, and behind him Chris was nodding agreement. Wiping a slight tear from her eye, Missy smiled back.
"Thanks, guys," she whispered. "That helps, a lot more than you'd think." Standing, he gave her hands one last squeeze then sat back on her bed. "How's Carlos and Dean? And I guess Sophia…"
"Carlos sent his best and said he'd try to pop in and say hello," Chris replied. "Dean told us to tell you he's impressed by what you did and wishes you hadn't gone through all that. Sophia's a bitch."
"Well, yeah, everyone knows that," Missy muttered, shaking her head, and causing Dennis to snort.
"I get the feeling that Sophia might have other problems soon," he commented with a dark grin. "If what I've picked up around the place is anything to go by." At her curious look, he added, "There's rumors that whatever it was that really happened at Winslow, she might have been a little closer to than anyone likes. Piggot is glaring at her more than usual and she's starting to look nervous now and then. Sophia's not the sort of person who looks nervous in general so I'm pretty sure that she knows more than she's admitted to."
"Huh." Missy considered his words. "Hope she gets screwed over then. Amy told me something about what happened and she's not happy about it at all."
"You see Amy much?" Chris asked with a lifted eyebrow.
"She's spent quite a lot of time talking to me," Missy nodded. "It's helped a huge amount. I like her."
"We are talking about Amy Dallon right? The Mistress of Snark? She of the acid tongue and zero tolerance for fools?"
"We are," Missy grinned, her eyes flicking to where the very same Amy Dallon had slipped silently into the room and was now standing listening just inside the door with an evilly amused look on her face. Neither boy noticed.
"Panacea the Grumpy? Our Lady of Healing with a Scowl?" Dennis tapped his lips thoughtfully, while Chris was grinning. "Ooh. I've got a good one. The Dark Lady Amy!"
"How about The White Mage?" Amy said in a low silky voice, making both Chris and Dennis freeze nearly as well as the latter's power did.
"Fuck," he said very quietly. "She's right behind me, isn't she?"
Missy, who now had both her hands over her mouth and was desperately holding in the giggles, nodded.
"Oh damn it. I'm going to pay for this."
"Yeah," Amy said as she knelt on the bed and put her head between theirs. "You're absolutely right about that…"
Missy distinctly saw Dennis flinch, which amused the hell out of her, and she could see the glee in Amy's eyes when the older girl gave her a quick look.
"I've been trying to contact you about your taste in practical jokes," Amy went on, sliding into a seated position on the bed between the two boys and putting her arms around them to prevent either escaping. "Let's have a little talk…"
Dennis covered his eyes and moaned, and Chris was very discreetly attempting to get away, without any luck. Amy was apparently stronger than you'd expect looking at her. Missy watched with great amusement, feeling much better than she had been now that she had a source of distracting entertainment like this.
It was nice to have friends, she thought, even scary ones like the White Mage.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Walking along the street Taylor examined the shops, looking into windows here and there. She'd taken the bus back to the city center after her dad went back to work and she'd spend a couple of hours reading, having decided that she needed to get a very cheap cellphone she could, if required, use without risking giving anyone a hint to her identity. She routinely turned the one her dad bought her off when she was in the warehouse or going between there and home, as she'd looked into it a while back and found that tracking them was distinctly possible. The PRT could certainly do it, and it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that the various gangs might be able to, not to mention random Tinkers. Not worth the risk, but having a phone not tied to her real identity would be useful.
A resource page on the internet, apparently written by and for very paranoid people, had suggested that purchasing a cheap prepaid cellphone with cash was a basic but surprisingly effective method to avoid this sort of tracking, and she'd read on PHO it was a common tactic for Parahumans on both sides of the law as well as for people who were just nervous in general about that sort of thing. So she'd taken some of the money her dad had given her and was now looking for something cheap enough to be a good deal.
The street she was on was one that ran parallel to the boardwalk but further inland, and had quite a lot of lower end shops, many of them selling cheap electronics among the other stock. So far she'd found a couple that had prepaid phones but the first one was in her view too expensive and the second one had a number of well hidden cameras she'd detected through her insects before she entered. Possibly the proprietor was just being cautious, but equally possibly he was collecting information that might be useful to him at the cost of being a danger to others. So she hadn't even paused at the door, she'd just kept walking.
Stopping at another shop a hundred or so feet further on she looked at the display of used laptops in the window, thinking that perhaps at some point she could save up enough to buy one of this sort of thing to get something faster than the elderly PC she had at home. Something from the same century at least would be a distinct upgrade she thought with a sigh. The cheapest one she could see had a significantly better spec according to the card next to it than her current computer, but it was still a hundred bucks more than she had available. So for now she'd have to put up with it. Perhaps as and when the hospital finally stomped Winslow and the school board flat they'd get enough to upgrade a few things.
The shop didn't sell phones, but her insects told her of another one a little further that seemed to have quite a collection and hardly any cameras present. Making sure the single one that covered the door and counter accidentally developed a cockroach right over the lens, she went inside and started examining the stock available. The man lounging behind the counter watched her with indifference in between staring at his own phone which was playing a movie she didn't recognize. Eventually she pointed. "Can I have two of those please?" she asked politely, indicating the cheapest phone he had, a really basic flip design that would be perfect for her needs and was only eleven dollars. Two gave her a backup.
Barely paying attention, he pulled two boxes out of the back of the display and dropped them on the counter then grunted, "Twennytwo bucks." Handing him a twenty and two dollar coins, she retrieved the boxes and put them into her coat pocket, not asking for a receipt and not surprised he didn't offer one. For all she knew the things were stolen, and he clearly didn't give a shit one way or the other.
Once she'd left the store she resumed walking, while scanning the area over a wide range, practicing with her ability, looking for any interesting insects she might find useful, and avoiding looking too closely at all the things going on she noticed. People deserved their privacy after all.
It didn't stop her spotting someone clearly preparing to dash out from a small alley and snatch a purse, who instead started hopping around yelling when some cockroaches from the rather dingy restaurant he was next to mysteriously decided the inside of his pants was a nice cozy place to be. He didn't seem enthused by this and divested himself of his lower covering with remarkable alacrity and little forethought for the spectacle he made, something he regretted when he finally stopped jumping up and down on the pants screaming and noticed the two cops who were staring at him from about ten feet away. They exchanged somewhat incredulous glances then moved in to ask some awkward questions.
Taylor hadn't got closer than two hundred yards the entire time and was having trouble walking straight due to holding in the laughter.
It was a small enough action, but it had stopped a minor crime while providing her with both amusement and practice, she thought with an inner giggle. And all the cockroaches had gotten away too which was just adding to the hilarity…
Turning right at the end of the street she went down the smaller one that linked the road she'd been on to the boardwalk, intending to make her way back in the other direction and see if anything interesting was to be found. Just at the edge of her range, she suddenly noticed something that made her smile to herself.
"Ooh…" she breathed. "That's a stroke of luck. I was hoping I was right and I am!"
There was another vespa mandarinia queen lying dormant in the back of a store that seemed to sell Asian food, or more accurately Asian food ingredients. She guessed that it imported a lot of that sort of thing, and the hornet probably got accidentally imported with a shipment of some far eastern foodstuff. Apparently that was not nearly as unusual as you'd expect, having been the reason a lot of invasive species ended up in places they shouldn't have done all over the world. And since food tended to be shipped refrigerated, an insect could easily go dormant and survive for a considerable time under such conditions. She'd read about things like snakes, scorpions, spiders, and even lizards turning up in produce. Unfortunately from her point of view there weren't any spiders or scorpions, but she wanted that hornet…
Wondering if this was where Vespa had come from in the first place, which was possible if slightly unlikely, she kept walking, looking for anything else that might be around but finding nothing particularly out of the ordinary. There were the usual insects and arachnids, including a surprisingly large number of black widows which the internet claimed were quite rare in this area but she could prove were much more common than people suspected. Under one building halfway between the boardwalk and the street the phone store was on was a very big termite colony which she made a mental note of in case she needed some termites. Lots of cockroaches of course, of a number of species, more wasps, and so on. Nothing she didn't have examples of already. And of course vast quantities of creatures in the bay inside her range.
Finally arriving at the Asian food store she looked up at the sign, then in the window, seeing it definitely catered to the tourists as much as any Asian locals based on the rather painfully extortionate prices. Idly wondering if it was something the ABB ran to have a legitimate source of funds as opposed to the casinos, protection rackets, drugs, and even less savory activities, she went inside and started slowly browsing the shelves, working her way closer to the back where the obvious stock room was, as well as her goal. She'd been waking the dormant hornet slowly and carefully since the moment she'd come into range and now it was nearly fully active, the insect twitching and vibrating its wings to warm up.
Giving one of the store staff who was moving things around on a shelf a small smile as she squeezed past, Taylor soon found herself near the door into the stock room. The hornet was now chewing a hole in the cardboard box full of some sort of vegetable she didn't recognize, something that looked somewhat like a leek but wasn't, and moments from freedom. No one was in the back room, luckily.
Squatting down she examined the cans of water chestnuts on the bottom shelf, while the hornet, having made a large enough hole to escape the box, slipped through it then dropped to the floor before making its way towards the door. As it reached the other side only a couple of feet away from her, Taylor dropped the can she'd picked up, which rolled away.
"Whoops," she exclaimed quietly, leaning over to retrieve it. While her hand was on the floor and her body was between the door and the sales counter, the woman behind it glancing towards the sound of the can falling, the hornet squeezed under the door and without a pause ran over her hand and up her coat sleeve. Picking the can up, feeling like she'd just managed something that was almost a heist-movie trick with an internal grin, Taylor put it back even she absorbed the insect for storage. Score. One Asian Giant Hornet, safely acquired, and it was a pity that the store staff would never know because they'd probably thank her.
Wondering if she should start some sort of pest control business while amused at the thought, she stood up again. Having looked around some more, she purchased a couple of the cans of overpriced water chestnuts, partly to cover her presence, partly in never to be mentioned thanks for the hornet, and partly because she liked water chestnuts and hadn't had any for some time. Soon she was back on the street heading to the bus stop at the far end.
She'd achieved what she'd come to do, and got a nice bonus out of it, so she was in a very good mood. The new queen wasn't quite the same as Vespa, being a slightly variant species she thought was probably the one known as the Japanese Giant Hornet, a color change type from Vespa but otherwise essentially the same. And now she had a spare for experiments and general use even which let her keep Vespa separate too, something she'd wanted for a while. It left open a whole series of new possibilities…
Tonight she was going to have quite a lot of notes to write down, she suspected. And with luck some new tricks added to her current selection. Smiling to herself, feeling cheerful and contented with how things are going, Taylor wandered along enjoying watching the tourists pointing at things and peering around curiously in case a Parahuman happened. They were easy to distinguish from locals if only due to that.
A few minutes later she noticed one group coming towards her, taking photos of the shops and looking about with expectant expressions. Somewhat amused because they really did seem to expect to see a Parahuman around every corner from what she could see, she watched them pass, only to see one of the group suddenly point down the street away from her with an excited cry. Curious, she looked over her shoulder. In the distance she could see a gathering of people moving in her direction, surrounding two costumed people she recognized. One in a blood-red costume, the Ward Aegis, and the other in black with a flowing cloak of the same color, who she could tell from here was radiating a sort of bad tempered aura. Shadow Stalker, the Ward PHO had many rumors about, quite a few of them implying she'd been caught doing something criminal which was why she was in the Wards to begin with.
Taylor had seen her, and the other Wards, several times in the past, but never close up. She'd gotten far closer to Vista than any of the others. Slowing, she allowed the gaggle of tourists and Wards to slowly catch up with her, the whole collection coming into her current range a few seconds later. Moving some of the limited collection of flying insects she had available at the moment closer, she examined the pair. Aegis was a fairly tall and solidly built young man who seemed, at a guess, to be about two to three years older than she was, which she recalled from the PRT website was the case. Apparently he wasn't too far off graduating from the Wards into the Protectorate proper. He was smiling under his mask and signing autographs, chatting with the tourists in pleasant tones and obviously doing the whole PR thing people joked was the main point of the PRT. It was even in the letters, she'd heard people say.
Shadow Stalker on the other hand was his polar opposite in most ways. Shorter than Taylor, a girl, dressed all in black, and giving off the distinct impression she very much didn't want to be there. As Taylor watched through the distant tiny eyes, the girl grabbed the autograph pad one small child held out, in a very grumpy and aggressive way, signed it roughly, and thrust it back. The kid looked a little startled and the mother gave Stalker a look of irritation. Shadow Stalker paid them no further attention and stomped onwards with the air of someone who wanted to hit something.
Landing a couple of flies on Aegis's back, Taylor listened. The boy, who had just signed another couple of autographs, shot his companion a warning look she entirely ignored. "Will you cool it, Stalker?" he hissed. "Play nice or we're both going to get yelled at. Just sign the things and try not to snarl at everyone."
"This is a fucking waste of time," the girl growled. "We should be out doing something useful, not scribbling on everything these weak idiots hand us."
Four hundred and fifty yards away Taylor went totally still, stopping dead in her tracks. Her face went blank as she forced the instant emotions she felt down with the same unyielding willpower she used to make her ability do what she wanted it to.
She recognized that voice.
She knew that voice.
She'd heard it making snide hateful comments with the same exact tone of suppressed violence for nearly two solid years.
Clenching her hands and using every iota of willpower she possessed to stop herself turning into something that would give Leviathan nightmares, charging back down the street, and melting fucking Sophia fucking Hess into a sizzling puddle then pissing on the remains, Taylor took several long slow deep breaths. At the back of her mind her power felt worried and annoyed in equal measure. After long enough that a couple of people walked around her with exclamations of irritation, Taylor forced her face into a pleasantly neutral expression that would have fooled most people until they saw the blazing rage in her eyes and resumed walking.
Her opinion of the PRT had just taken a significant hit, and she needed to go somewhere private where she could work through her current somewhat justifiably, in her opinion, irked feelings. It might be time to see how long she could stay underwater where no one would notice if she got a bit upset for a while.
She didn't want to disappoint her dad after all, and dissolving a Ward while laughing like a lunatic would definitely do that. And the worst thing of all was that she'd been having a really good day up to that point.
Oh well. They said the best revenge was living well. It was possible they were wrong, and the best revenge was revenge, but Taylor was willing to give the first option a try. For now.
Other options existed if that didn't work, after all...
By the time she got on the bus, people were leaning away from the vicious grin she was wearing inside her hood, and if Sophia Hess had seen it she'd have started running right there and then.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
By the time Taylor got home well past midnight, she'd calmed down dramatically, although there was still a deep irritation with the whole situation. Having spent three hours exploring the bottom of the bay as a giant crab hybrid, which had been both educational and fun, she'd finally decided that her wish to avoid thinking about the three idiots was still the optimal solution. Bloody vengeance would provide only momentary satisfaction at the cost of peace of mind and all manner of trouble. She was still pissed beyond belief at the discovery that Sophia was nominally a hero, the very idea making her wonder if anyone had even bothered to check on the fucking girl at any point in the last eighteen months or so, and it cast the competence of the PRT into even more of a bad light than she'd always been told they deserved, but what was done was done. With any luck at all she'd never have to deal with Sophia again, and as long as the damned girl stayed out of her way she'd do her best to ignore the fact she even existed.
Several hours of experimentation had helped her find her happy place again, and she'd made some fascinating breakthroughs. Each of which immediately sparked a whole slew of new ideas of course, which seemed to be the way of things.
She was seriously considering seeing if she could write up some of her discoveries and send the information to an entomologist or something, since she was sure she was finding out things that were entirely unknown to science. Perhaps the university had someone who might like the information? It would be worth checking at some point.
The limpets had provided her with one of the more useful outcomes too, which pleased her greatly. Having read that paper, which had suggested that the radula, or tiny teeth, on a limpet's tongue were quite likely to be among the hardest and strongest, if not the hardest and strongest, organically produced materials in the world, she'd wanted to find out for herself. Sure enough, the material the limpet used was amazing. Incredibly hard, tough, and strong, added to her customized chitin design it boosted the durability enormously. Her stinger was even sharper now, and her exoskeleton was getting ridiculous. She'd pretty much run out of ideas of how to test it, actually, and was intending to look up how armor plate for tanks was tested. That might give her some useful methods she could adapt.
And she'd managed to further improve the bioluminescence process, increasing the brightness of the output quite noticeably and even extending the wavelength range it produced well into the infra-red, which was interesting. Next she was going to try ultra-violet but that might require some redesign. It was more for the reason it was fun and gave a nice effect than for any practical reason so there was no real rush.
Taylor was also very satisfied with her new hornet, which of course was now Vespa II. The original Vespa was special, but the new one was already one of her favorites and she had a lot of tests she hadn't yet had a chance to try that the insect would be useful for. She'd have done it today if it wasn't for her accidental unmasking of Sophia and the time it took for her to get over that and calm down, she thought as she got ready for bed.
Slipping under the covers, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, feeling tired and mostly back in a decent mood. She hadn't told her dad yet about Sophia because he'd looked really tired when she got back and she didn't want to upset him. She could tell him tomorrow when both of them were awake and able to deal with it.
On the whole, even with that little hiccup to life, it had been a good day, she thought sleepily, drifting off moments later. She dreamed of strange insectoid monsters horrifying in their scope and abilities.
Wearing a small smile, Taylor slept comfortably.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The next morning, she jolted away to a sound she recognized instantly. Everyone recognized that sound instantly.
Her father appeared at her door a moment later, his expression grim. He came into her room and both of them sat and listened to the Endbringer sirens blare the distinctive tone and pattern indicating someone, somewhere in the world, was having the worst, and likely last, day of their life.
When they fell silent, he had his arm around her. "I'm glad you didn't feel you needed to rush off and help," he whispered, his face sad but relieved.
"What could I do to an Endbringer, dad? I'm not a hero, I'm just learning about things." Taylor shrugged helplessly "My powers aren't useful for fighting those monsters. I'd just end up dead. Like so many others do."
She scowled. "Fucking Endbringers. I wish there was a way to stop the damned things."
"So do I Taylor. So do I. Everyone does."
Unable to really cast off the depression both had sunk into, they sat there busy with their own thoughts, Taylor glad of the presence of her father and her power, Vespa on her head as she wondered what city wouldn't be there the next day. Eventually she turned to her father and in an attempt to think about something else, started telling him about all the things she'd discovered the previous day. Including Sophia, which he wasn't really all that pleased about.
In fact he was quite irritated, it would be fair to say.
Peeved, even.
He didn't go into work that day, and by the time, two hours later, they were sitting in front of the TV listening to the news and the sombre announcement that Eidolon had fallen in battle against the Simurgh in Canberra, Australia, the victim of an apparent accidental friendly fire incident from Legend due to the Simurgh zigging when she should have zagged, she'd filled him in on all sorts of fascinating discoveries and was explaining about her idea that required her to learn more about computers.
After the news broadcast ended, they sat staring at each other for some time.
It was a quiet day in the end, neither much feeling like doing anything. Taylor suspected they weren't alone in this.
Something fundamental had changed, she could feel it, but what, she wasn't yet sure.
It was another one of those things where only the passing of time would reveal the secret.
