(Worm belongs to wildbow. Starcraft belongs to Blizzard.)

(There needs to be more "Taylor as the Queen of Blades" fics, so here is one. I'm still working on It Means Flame too, I swear!)

Signal

Trapped. Buried in rotting filth. Suffocating, locked in a metal box. At first, she'd fought, trying to force the locker open, break out. When that failed, she screamed and cried. She called for help until her throat was raw and all light had fled, leaving her choking in the putrid darkness. After that, she'd cried, and after that...

Taylor woke as the morning light shined through the vents in the locker door. Footsteps and voices. She could hear as the school filled up. A familiar terror settled in Taylor's chest when she realized how weak she felt, her body feverish as it battled several competing infections. Her wounds, from her frantic struggle to escape, festered and burned.

She needed antibiotics. She needed them soon. If dehydration didn't kill her first.

Taylor's fist bumped weakly into the metal. "H... h... help... Somebody help..."

"Hey man, you hear that?"

"Isn't that Hebert's locker? Shit that stinks."

"Is she still in there? Haha! Damn."

"What a loser."

Taylor croaked, "Please, let me... out... I'll die..."

A kind of numb horror shrouded Taylor's thoughts as the glimmer of hope she hadn't even realized had sparked, crumbled in betrayed agony. They knew. They knew she was trapped. They were laughing at her as she died. Did her dad even know she was in trouble?

Taylor's breath caught as two new voices caught her attention.

"...I'm sure there's nothing to worry about," Sophia's voice said. "I bet Hebert is right where she belongs."

Taylor blinked in disbelief. Was that a teacher? Footsteps. The teacher walking away. A tear fell from Taylor's chin. When had she started crying again? She was so thirsty. She couldn't afford to waste any water...

"...called her dad on friday," came Emma's voice. "He still thinks we're friends. How fucking sad is that? I told him Taylor was sleeping over."

No. Taylor couldn't believe Sophia and Emma would go that far. Emma'd actually gone out of her way to make sure Taylor's dad wouldn't know anything was wrong until it was too late.

Sophia laughed. "Damn girl. That is fucking awesome. So you want.. want... wa..."

A vast void of stars and mingling realities. Two vast luminous shapes, dancing, spiraling around each other. Twin tails of glittering Shards.

Taylor snapped back to lucidity. The dark interior of the locker lit up as something other and outside roared through her being and coarsed over her skin. Taylor felt inexplicably strong, like an adrenaline surge turned up to eleven, but she wasn't afraid. She was furious.

Voices from outside. "Whoa, Sophia, are you alright? What happened?"

Energy flared out from Taylor's skin, making the very air inside the locker glow as bolts of electric discharge danced between her and the metal. Taylor wanted out, and with an animalistic snarl she pushed...

The locker exploded. Boys and girls screamed and ran as metal rent and flew apart, scattering shrapnel and detritus across the hallway.

It was a matter of seconds before Taylor's eyes adjusted. She saw a dozen or so teenagers gaping at Taylor as she floated out of the ruined wall. Sophia was a short ways to her left, kneeling with a hand to her head as Emma crouched over her.

Taylor flexed her new power, making rubble from the destroyed wall and row of lockers stir across the floor and drift up into orbit around her. Her eye's locked on Sophia. Her tormentor. Her would-be murderer.

Sophia scowled. "Fucking bullshit. She triggered?"

For the first time, Taylor noticed that, yes, she was in fact levitating in the air after blasting apart an entire wall to escape her locker. She... she had powers. She was a parahuman. She could be a hero. She could transfer to Arcadia High and never see Sophia again. Taylor's fury began to fade as laughter bubbled up from inside her.

Except, she couldn't. The laughter died before it began as Taylor realized that an entire crowded hall, full of people who were more or less complicit in her attempted murder, would know her identity.

"No. No! Fuck this useless weakling getting powers," Sophia snarled.

Taylor looked down at the genuinely offended bully. "Fuck you, Sophia."

Focusing on the putrid rot from the locker that was now orbiting her, Taylor vented a years worth of frustration by pelting Sophia with the filth. The month-old used tampons and pads that Sophia had trapped her in a locker with for a whole weekend.

Sophia tried to dodge, but there was a lot of rotting crap being thrown her way. By now the hallway was empty, most everybody else either quietly backing away our outright fleeing, so Taylor and Emma were the only witnesses when Sophia suddenly transformed into a smokey shadow.

Taylor froze in her attack, ceasing her advance and gaping as she sank down onto her feet. "You're... you're Shadow Stalker." And just like that, the rage, the fury, the betrayal, all came back stronger than ever. "You're Shadow Stalker? You're a fucking hero?"

"That's right, Hebert," Sophia smirked as she pulled a shiv out of... somewhere. "And you must be a poor deluded villain, attacking an innocent school. Of course, as a noble Ward and all that shit, I stepped in to defend my friends and classmates from your evil rampage."

It made so much sense. The teachers never did anything. No one helped Taylor or stood up to Sophia no matter what she did. Sophia was a government-sanctioned superhero. Fuck that. Fuck her. Fuck the PRT, and fuck being a superhero, if Sophia was counted among their ranks.

Still smirking, Sophia lunged, going shadowy to maintain her trajectory in defiance of gravity as she shot towards Taylor.

Taylor scrambled back, avoiding the slashing shiv by inches as she reached out with her power and tore another locker off the wall. It passed right through Sophia's shadow state. Sophia went solid and her shiv scored a line of blood down Taylor's arm. Taylor lashed out in a wild swing, but Sophia just smirked and went shadowy again.

Taylor's hand lashed through Sophia's body, and met resistance.

With a shriek of agony, Sophia fell back, going solid as arcs of electricity continued to flicker over her body. She crashed to the floor on her back, twitching and seizing. Nearby, a cowering Emma went pale as she took in the sight of Taylor standing over a fallen Sophia.

Taylor looked down at her tormentor, her would-be murderer. The superhero. It would be so easy to kill her. The power was there at her metaphorical and literal fingertips. One blast of lightning and no more Sophia.

But Taylor was better than that... right?

The decision was taken out of her hands. Taylor could hear footsteps rushing towards her, feel the hostile presences moving through space. Taylor shook her head. Gathering her power, she hurled it at the wall, ripping a hole through the school.

With one last glance back, Taylor lifted herself into the air and accelerated into the sky.

Taylor knew she couldn't go home. There were more than enough witnesses to identify her, and Sophia could be counted on to twist things around to make Taylor look like the monster, just like she'd always twisted things around to make Taylor look like an overreacting whiny bitch.

So Taylor kept flying, and put Brockton Bay behind her.

Hours passed as the landscape streamed by below her. Taylor found herself up in the mountains by the time her emotions wound down. She drifted down to the ground and slumped against a conifer tree, letting the tears fall.

Taylor wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered. It was cold enough to be dangerous up this far. But she had her power, some kind of electromagnetic projection or manipulation combined with telekinesis, she guessed. She could burn off energy into the air around her, heating it until she was comfortable. She couldn't keep it up if she fell asleep, though, and she was so tired. Not to mention still covered in putrid filth.

Wiping tears off her face, Taylor stood up and lifted into the air. Continuing straight up beyond the treetops, Taylor looked around until she spotted a ranger station on a distant mountainside. She flew towards it, circling around a few times to make sure it was uninhabited.

Landing on the doorstep, Taylor forced the lock with her power and stepped inside.

It was small, but it was stocked and it had a working sink. Taylor sagged in relief at the running water, even if the supply was probably limited to a tank on the roof. Her clothes were a lost cause, crusted with blood, decay, vomit, and urine. Taylor stripped down and threw everything in the garbage.

Standing naked at the filled sink, Taylor manged to improvise a sponge bath. She cleaned herself up, as best she could. The cut on her arm had already healed, which was a pleasant surprise.

Taylor spent longer trying to get her hair clean than the rest of her put together, growing more and more frustrated until her power lashed out and a lightbulb exploded. Finally, she admitted defeat and took a pair of scissors to her long matted strands.

Once she felt sufficiently cleansed of the locker, Taylor found a thick blanket and curled up on the cot. She'd figure out what she'd do for clothes tomorrow.

Taylor woke in a sudden cold sweat as she tried to turn over and felt something wrong with her body. Her eyes flew open and her hands patted down her front, and Taylor screamed.

Swollen breasts dribbling purple slime. Massive bulging belly, and something moving. Impossibly, unbelievably, Taylor was pregnant. Heavily pregnant. Somehow she'd gone from normal to.. this... all while she slept.

And then, before she could truly panic, her power reached, and a connection snapped into being in her mind. Information, like she was a computer and someone had just plugged in a thumb drive, streamed into her consciousness, and with it control.

The two creatures in her womb. Zerg Larva. They were hers. No, they were her. As much a part of her as her arm or leg, and just as responsive to her will.

Taylor calmed down, flopping back and panting as she got her pounding heart under control. "Okay, really, what the hell."

Looking down at herself again, Taylor worried. Having powers was one thing. Having powers that apparently made her pregnant overnight with some kind of alien spawn was a whole other bag of body horror.

But her power was controlling them, and it was easy, almost like they were designed to be controlled. And Taylor realized. The lightning, the telekinesis, the sensing hostile intent. It was all just a side effect of her actual power.

Taylor had a complete sense of the Larva's biology, and there was a lot more information there than she would have guessed. Dozens of varied and dangerous creatures the Larva could grow to become, all bound by a unifying psionic signal. Taylor's power was a broadcaster and antenna for the control signal.

"Zerg," Taylor tasted the word.

And just like a battleship's targeting antenna could function as a weapon in its own right if the power was turned up, Taylor's psionic power, meant to control these Zerg over vast distances, was a weapon in its own right at the human scale.

"Okay," Taylor said to herself. "But what the hell now?"

(So, I'm trying to avoid the "gets Zerg powers = plays SC2 IRL" cliche. Taylor won't be building bases, mining minerals, or spawning moar overlords. At least, not until she has a reason to beyond "that's what you do in the game". Would Taylor even need Overlords for their normal purpose? Her power explicitly gives her unlimited multitasking... For her, Overlords would instead be relays, I think.)