A/N: In an totally non-serious effort to get back into a bit of writing. Credit to Wildbow for the awesomely imagined universe and story that is Worm. Certain descriptions are used from the Web Serial as this story goes past familiar locations and people, I put my own spin on it as much as possible whilst still keeping stuff recognizable. This is AU!, not just in story, certain powers and capes are still there, others are changed or completely cut out. Just in case, Nex Entertainment, Platinum Games and Sega own the license where Taylor's powers are inspired from, added with my own ideas, twists, logic and zanyness.

Chapter 1

What does one do when faced with three people who fucked up your life at any opportunity they got?

Three teenage girls who had made it seemingly their personal mission to screw with you, sabotage you in school, bully you? Your first instinctual reply would be... fight back? But they were the popular ones, attractive ones, wearing angel's clothing to hide the rot beneath, and they were very careful not to get caught doing the truly bad stuff - like vandalizing my bag and so forth. They could even get away with some 'light' physical bullying, right in front of the teachers, who always wrote it off as the general roughhousing of teenagers.

Madison, Sophia and Emma. Where Madison was cute, Sophia and Emma were the types of girls that fit the 'prom queen' image. Sophia was dark skinned, with an athletic build she'd developed as a runner on the school track team. Red-headed Emma, by contrast, had all the curves and was good looking enough to get occasional jobs as an amateur model.

I was a waif, I had inherited a thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth from my mother, but my large eyes and my gawky figure made me look a lot more like my dad. My very long dark hair, the only feature I liked, was at the moment soaked with cranberry juice thanks to the latest ambush where they managed to track me down to the girls toilet , a place I went to so I could eat lunch in peace.

Yes, that was what I was reduced to. Yet any physical retaliation from me, I knew would instantly tar me with the brush of the bad girl, and get me reprimanded. Going through 'proper channels' or the legal route was out because again it devolved to their word against mine.

Colored blotches of purple, red and orange stained my brown hooded sweatshirt and green t-shirt. My glasses were beaded with the droplets of juice and soda. A drip ran down my nose and fell from the tip to land in the sink.

Using a paper towel from the dispenser, I wiped my glasses off and put them on again. The residual streaks made it just as hard to see, if not worse than it had been.

Relax Taylor, I told myself.

I pulled the glasses off to clean them again with a wet towel, and found the streaks were still there. A scream of fury and frustration escaped my lips, and I kicked the plastic bucket that sat just beneath the sink, it was torn to shreds from the sheer force, the pieces flying to slam into the walls to further destroy themselves on it. With a mighty effort I gained a rein on myself... it wouldn't do to tear the place apart. Oh yeah, as if that wasn't enough I could probably pulp and tear the heads off those bitches, and yeah I was a cape aka parahuman, but it was the same thing as if I was walking around with a loaded gun and that made the whole situation infinitely worse... and I wasn't the only parahuman on the planet.

It was as if the universe handed to me exactly what I wanted, yet couldn't use, because I wasn't a villain damn it. Not to mention my powers... which were if anyone was to look at my research journal about what I had discovered about them so far... pure bullshit. Undiluted physics breaking bullshit, yet I could do it.

So much for afternoon classes, I couldn't go into Art class looking like this and Sophia would be there, not when I felt like this... my frustration, my anger, my hatred for those three girls was still boiling below the surface waiting for a trigger, which Sophia would as her nature poke at.

It would be so easy, to give the trio the hell back that they had put me through: the vicious e-mails, the trash they'd upended over my desk, the flute –my mother's flute– they'd stolen from my locker. It wasn't just them either. Other girls and a small handful of boys had joined in, 'accidentally' skipping over me when passing out assignment handouts, adding their own voices to the taunts and the flood of nasty emails, to get the favor and attention of three of the prettier and more popular girls in our grade.

But there were three things more powerful that stopped me; my dad, and the look of disappointment on his face as I was arrested by the heroes of the city (there were three teams and any number of independents in town), the memory of my mother and how she would have reacted, and finally, myself... my desire and goal to be a superhero and it would always work to calm myself down. It was what I used to make myself get out of bed on a school day. It was a crazy dream that made things tolerable. It was something to look forward to, something to work towards. It made it possible to keep from dwelling on the fact that Emma Barnes, leader of the trio, had once been my best friend.

I picked up my school bag and headed out of the bathroom, there was no one in the halls as afternoon classes were in session so I could head upstairs to another sanctuary I had. On the east side of the school was small staircase that had roof access, and only the janitor used it and all the access doors were locked. However, a measly lock was no barrier to me with my strength. So I broke just one in a manner that was not really too apparent, and with the slow wheels of school beauracracy and tight budget, it never got fixed. The small roof landing was my true sanctuary, and it was a place I knew the janitor had gifted me - hows that for you - in an entire school the lowly janitor was my only true ally - for it had been the same one who had found me in the worst day of my life when I had been trapped by Sophia in the locker.

We didn't talk, he just left notes when he had something to say, and it was always helpful - like whenever he overheard a new prank or bully tactic being planned.

I arrived and dropped my bag in a corner, where it landed next to a large duffle bag which contained my 'school clothes'. I pulled off my glasses, dropped them in the duffle and the world around me sharpened considerably to an extreme visual acuity. Then I promptly undressed to put the fouled clothes into the 'dirty clothes' section of the duffle. I sighed and unstrapped my barely needed bra, awkwardly stepped out of my underwear and at last I pulled off my trainers and socks.

I was suffused with a feeling of relief.

I sighed deeply and with a thought and flex of my power the world around me changed. I was still standing on the landing, but the colors were now hyper contrasted to my eyes and the edges of everything even sharper, sounds reach my ears with an extra sharp clarity - I could hear a nearby bug rubbing its feelers together. Satsified I walked to the roof door opened it and stepped out into the afternoon sun.

I was now in a world I called Subrosa - latin for beneath the rose - no real reason other than it sounded pretty and was somewhat apt . It was a world that mirrored reality - a level below, sideways, up... so to speak, there's no words really for it. In it, things were very different; people were shifting transparent forms instead of solid, the temperature was always the same with no fluctations between night and day, and while I could influence the real world from Subrosa, such as punch something, talk to someone, become invisible or not to them and so forth, I couldn't bring anything from the Real into Subrosa - anything - not even the cranberry juice that had stained my hair, was now completely gone, left in the Real. Hence the undressing, it was a world I could only walk in my birthday suit. After three months, I think I've pretty much become used to it.

My bare feet didn't protest at all at the very hot tarmac of the roof and I stepped up onto the edge of school building and looked down, seeing the shifting transparent forms of students walking in and out of Winslow High. My eyes turned to the Brockton Bay city skyline and the Atlantic ocean beyond before I simply stepped off the side of the building.

I smiled as I fell the five floors, exhilarating in somersaulting once and landing almost perfectly onto the grass, using my monstrous strength to absorb the fall through my legs. The lawn grass was rather badly depressed and crushed, but I paid it no mind as headed out onto the sidewalk street and began running home. I was careful to keep my concentration to remain intangible and invisible to the Real, but generally avoided running through people - as every time it happened, people would experience cold shivers and other similar symptoms.

I began to settle into my run towards home, delighting in the freedom and the wind running over every inch of my skin.

My stamina had improved by leaps and bounds over the past three months of my training routine, and with my long legs I ate up miles rather quickly. I was near Olympic level now for running a mile, (yes, I keep track) and my constitution and strength still felt like I was barely scratching the surface. I also loved the all over tan I had now. It was during the runs that I also really didn't mind having small breasts, I couldn't imagine tolerating them bouncing around every which way if they were larger.

My thoughts were on Emma on the run home. She had been my 'BFF' from grade one all the way through middle school. It hadn't been enough for us to spend our time together at school, so we had alternated staying at each others houses every weekend. I remember my mother saying that we were so close we were practically sisters.

A friendship that deep is intimate, in terms of a no-holds-barred sharing of every vulnerability and weakness.

So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn't talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend? Discovering that she was now using every one of those secrets and vulnerabilities I had shared with her to wound me in the most vicious ways she could think of? It was crushing.

I was home in just under an hour in my estimation, I only re-entered the Real when I was standing in the backyard, which had high walls and enough shrubbery that I was concealed from every angle of the neighbors. I opened the hiding place for the house key, a loose wooden panel on the side of the garden shed, and let myself in.

I immediately headed for the upstairs shower and stood under the stream, luxuriating in getting the sweat off and cooling down even further. I enjoyed twenty minutes of blissful non-thinking and non-worrying before I stepped out and toweled off, dropping it into a laundry hamper before heading downstairs, through the kitchen and into the basement.

My house is old, and the basement was never renovated. The walls and floor are concrete and the ceiling was exposed boards and electrical cords. The furnace used to be coal fueled, and there was still an old coal chute, where the coal trucks used to come by to unload the winter's supply of coal for heating the house. The chute was boarded up, but around the time I was copying my original 'superpower notebook' over in code, I had decided to play it safe in all respects and start getting creative with my secrecy. It was then that I'd started using it.

I brought the book over to a disused workbench that the house's previous owner had left in our basement, then opened the windows that were at the same level as the driveway and front garden to let some fresh air in. I opened the book and perused the first chapter that generally covered my tests of my body's limits.

So far I hadn't found a limit to the amount of weight I could lift. I had scrounged together a set of makeshift ones using bricks and ropes and easily worked out with the equivalent of over four hundred pounds on each arm for a bicep curl. Somehow my thin arms and bicep muscles could do it... as I said, bullshit powers. My legs were the same story and my flexibility was insane now, above an Olympic gymnast and just short of a contortionist. I could stand on one leg and lift my other so my toes could touch my head and I could do the most difficult of yoga moves that existed. It also detailed some basic martial arts moves that I practiced very very carefully with my dad; palm strikes, kicks, and blocks to common attacks, ways to break out of holds and so on.

It had been a nightmare in the beginning after I had manifested the powers... my rather exasperated dad had to shell out a lot of money during that first month to repair the odd bits of the house I kept breaking - door handles and light switches mostly.

The second chapter covered Subrosa and explorations of that world, which made for a short chapter unfortunately, I had so far seen no one in that world like I was or anything uniquely native to it. So it was mostly about what I could influence in the Real from Subrosa. Dad had been a great help to discover how I could interact with people. I could appear as almost a glasslike ghostly version of myself to be seen and heard - though my voice sounded spookily distorted.

The third section covered easily the most bullshit ability I had - my hair. I counted it apart from my physical abilities. I could create a collosal amount of it and manipulate it as if it was a living part of me. The hair could also plunge into Subrosa, and emerge anywhere in the Real so long as it was still attached to my head and in my line of sight. So it would appear as if my hair would shoot into nothing and disappear near my body and emerge from seemingly right next to the target.

It was also clearly different from normal human hair, scissors couldn't cut it, and it was bulletproof if I made a 'hair' wall merely two millimeters thick. My dad had borrowed a fifty calibre pistol from one of his friends at work to test that one out, and I theorized I could stop even larger stuff, a tank gun, with thicker walls. Fire didn't do anything either as hair was notoriously easy and quick to burn away normally. It would be an awesome and flexible non-lethal takedown and combat option, though inevitably I also imagined many ways they could become lethal.

My fourth chapter covered a power that I had accidentally discovered and annoyingly could only use in the Real. It was a variation of the power a mercernary cape called Genesis had. With a flick or swish of a finger any object, animal or creature I imagined could be brought into being, no matter how bloody outlandish and alien it was. The catch was that I had to expend effort and 'power' for lack of a better word to keep it in existence and the larger the thing was the more power it took. I could make something handheld size and keep it in existence all day, the moment it got bigger though; I had once idly brought close to just under a thousand pounds of gym weights into existence to try and find my strength limit... only to nearly pass out from the sudden drain on me.

My dad had started to jokingly call it 'magical conjuring', happily shoving his old Dungeon and Dragons books under my nose and pointing at the School of Conjuring. A lot of the stuff in there were actually pretty good ideas (Mage armor, oh yeah), though quite a few were just ridiculously impossible for a 'conjuration' ability (Teleportation?) not to mention dangerous (Incendiary Cloud... good grief).

There was also the matter of just how to still travel and use the Subrosa. It was extremely useful as an escape route, travel and recon, yet every time I used it I would have to leave everything on me behind. I could conjure clothes in an emergency, but in any sort of situation or cape fight I would have no time to first get dressed before going into a fight. Conjuring the clothes directly on me was something I also didn't feel safe doing... what if a part of it appeared in me, because I didn't imagine it properly and exactly and ended up severing an artery or something equally important.

My only solution thus far was quickly conjuring a full face white mask with gold ornamentation and become the only hero in the States who fights in her birthday suit; the Leader of The Guild, a hero team in Canada, a woman called Narwhal also did it, though she did use her force field powers to protect herself and cover herself in a layer of crystal... there was also a female supervillain called The Siberian who didn't even do that - I wasn't keen to imitate that monster of a woman, but I would if necessary. My embarrassment and society telling me that being nude in public was 'bad' versus saving a life, guess what won.

My fifth and last chapter, ways to hide my identity, strategies to fight using my hair, conjuring and strength. Not to mention all my research on the local capes in the city and general east US coast that I might encounter.

Then there was The Plan; how I would debut onto the cape scene. It was first to continue training for another month, then as the school year ended and summer began, would take the leap into the world of superheroics.

Today's experience had changed that. There was only so much you could learn, train in a predictable safe environment, it was time to get experience. Not to mention if I didn't let some steam off soon I feared I'd explode... and God help Brockton Bay.

I'd speak to dad... this weekend I would begin.