Y'know what? Screw it. I'm just procrastinating. So, sorry for making you guys wait, but here it is, the next chapter. Enjoy, and I hope you find it makes the story a little easier to deal with, after the trainwreck the last chapter apparently was.


Snowflake 1.3

"So." Her father began the next time she was awake and had deigned to let him know. "It would appear that you are a Parahuman."

"No I'm not." The words just slipped out, and that brought on a confused look to her face. "Okay, why did I just say that? Um," She cocked her head in what was rapidly becoming a thinking expression for her, post-Locker. "Well, maybe it's because it's not from around here?" She paused, considered that, then nodded, more sure now. "Yeah, my power isn't the usual type. Not like anything you'll find here, partly because it's not just one thing, somehow focused on dimensional shenanigans." Not sure just where that little tidbit came from but keep rolling. "Instead, it's more..." She shifted her head to the other side. "Old? No, more, more like a legend. Like a fantasy. Like stories of monsters and heros or Dragons and their Slayers. That kind of old." She nodded, happy to have it settled. "But I do appear to have power, yes."

"How did it happen?" Well, there's a few things you could say about her father, but one of them was when something was settled, he could accept it and move on.

She considered. "Well, at the very least, I had a Trigger Event, like most capes here on this variant of Earth." She turned to him. "That means that I had a-" She cut herself off, made a face, then continued without telling him the whole story. "A really harsh time. Most capes also don't have it as bad as I had it, but then again, most don't have to deal with a psychopath or a sociopath focused on them either." At the look on his face, beginning to fill with rage, she put a hand on his knee and focused on the calm of the Bay just outside her window. She wasn't sure why at that moment, but she was glad as he started to calm down. "I didn't tell you because there was nothing you could do. The School administration did absolutely nothing, showing an absolutely criminal level of negligence, and outside of going to the school board, which would have been fruitless without proof or a single eyewitness account, which due to the school being run by incompetents and those blackmailed and afraid, just like the students themselves, they would've been hard pressed to get a single useful thing from them, even if they got anything at all. And besides, they have a lawyer on their side. The guilty won't be getting punished for it at all, if past events are any indication." It was starting to get scary, how she could anticipate her father's arguments just from the shifting emotions on his face. Also scary just how accurately she had just described the likely fallout. Which is to say, absolutely nothing.

Emotions and thoughts rampaged over her father's face, and she kept her thoughts on the bay for which Brockton Bay is named in the summer as she tried to keep him from exploding. She knew that he often raged against his inability to help out the other guys from the Dockworker's Union, and that his anger wasn't a calm or silent one. It was one that exploded violently when sufficiently provoked, and often took as much as a half hour or even an entire hour sometimes to cool down.

In the end, it came down to one, calmly mentioned sentence. "You're not going back to Winslow."

For a moment, she looked at him a little oddly, assessing him and his resolve. Then he added. "We'll find a way to get you up to speed, and to get you a job you will enjoy and thrive in, but you are not going to go back into that little hellhole."

She smiled at him. He probably wouldn't get much done in going against the administration, but he'd try, armed as he was with what probably won't work. Because he was just that kind of guy, to go to bat for his friends and family.

Then she thought about the fact that, as a leader of a union, as a person out to find contracts and legal, paying jobs that don't skiff the men working them, he would've had to deal with politicians and business leaders and sometimes haggle with them extensively. It was entirely possible that he had friends amongst those numbers, and they might have friends or favors that could get Winslow taken to task. So she smiled at him encouragingly and suggested as much, to find someone who could, maybe, get a surprise inspection done by the Health Department or an investigator for the School Board, to his nodding approval. Then she added "But I do still have one last thing to do there. I'll be going back, once maybe, just to do that, and get some closure there, but after that, I'm gone just like you asked."

He looked worried at that. "Anything I should know about?" he asked mildly.

She thought about it, then shook her head. "No, probably nothing more lethal than words. Then again, in the right situations, especially with certain types of sociopaths, that can be pretty lethal, but no, I'm not planning on it. Although..." She paused for a second, thinking. "Well, a can of pepper spray wouldn't go amiss." Cheap, legal, easily dismissed, and very useful, even lethal, in the right hands or situations. Hinders eyesight on contact (major point!) or causes possible skin irritation (often a good distraction, but requires the right formula), spray cans often have flammable gaseous propellant (may explode under enough heat/pressure or be set on fire like a flamethrower), socially acceptable, easily hidden, and cheap. Oh wait, mentioned cheap twice. Well, how about...

... "Possible CO2 cartidge replacement"?

...

Nope!

At least that was an idea he could get behind, if the relieved look on Danny's face was any indication.

Right about then as he began to collapse in relief, a few thoughts occurred to her.

One of which was "Why do I have voices in my head?"

Another was "How am I going to deal with the fallout of this?" Simple answer: One step at a time.


"Taylor" smiled as she moved about Winslow. Almost nobody had really registered what was going on with her and the Trio (ain't Stranger powers grand?) and the past few days had been gleefully lacking in Greg's too-close presence and other Bullcrap!

Now, be nice. Greg just doesn't know what he's doing with himself, and probably just has Asperger's Syndrom and it's just showing through. There are plenty of normal people who are worse, just in this school, and a number of others with an Autism Spectrum disorder who are worse off in social interaction as well. And that's just here in Brockton Bay.

"Taylor" paused. 'Hunh?'

Okay, think "Halbeard", and what he's been accused of having, but not as bad. It's easily misdiagnosed as really bad ADHD.

"Taylor" blinked. "Oh." Welp, you learn something new everyday.

And, isn't that the point?

Today in her replacement of Taylor she only had one class with the trio (well, duo these days, what with Madison either missing or playing hooky for the past week or so), so she went more or less invisible to the rest of the student body and gleefully spent the day watching them flounder around in futility.

Ooh, a little nudge here or there and suddenly you'd have a bunch of skinheads trying to gut a bunch of Asians or vice versa!

...

Okay, actually doing it was a little excessive, but look at what She learned!

And then Art Class came, and she took her time with the Duo. They were really starting to question their existences, so maybe lay off a bit so that they can come back, and thus be in a better position to be put off further?

That was something Taylor had learned from them, and She had learned it through Taylor.

She paused at the end of "Used to love you", and instead of going straight to the next song, she looked Emma right in the eye, made sure that Sophia was paying attention, and then said, "You know, you promised that we'd be friends forever. That we'd stick by each other thick and thin, no matter how hard things got. That I'd always have you there, ready for me to rely on you, and once I was strong enough that I could be there for you too." Her face was rather sad as the Stranger/Master power she didn't understand kicked in, making sure that they paid attention and listened. "I guess you lied, and now I'm forced to stand alone. No friend to help. No support. And I'm forced to wonder if you were ever worth it." She let an illusory tear fall from her equally illusory left eye, expressing what little feeling she truly felt at that moment, intense as it was. The bell rang and she forced herself to get up and go to her next class, feeling a little dead inside, but fractionally better, as if a little piece of the weight on her soul had lifted. However cold a comfort it was, it had helped.

She never saw their responses, but she never really needed to, as she slowly faded out of existence.


As heavy music drowned out the world, drowned out everything that could bring a numbers question, a young girl was sitting down, trying to enjoy a book.

35.03472% chance of managing that position as you are now.

Okay, it was a dirty book, but she was actually enjoying it. Her grandfather called it a "Trashy Romance Novel", but hey, it was well-written and enjoyable!

A knock on the door cut through the music and she slid off her headphones. The woman from earlier, a gynoid with a bomb for a power generator, as she'd learned from inquiry, both to her power and to the 'woman' herself, smiled at her softly. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, if you're okay with Mac 'n Cheese."

She grinned back. "That sounds amazing." And honestly, it did.

True, life was still hard, and her parents were still dead, and Brockton Bay was still kind of a hole, but it was home, and it was here, and the Big Gigantic Numbers of DOOM were starting to get bigger, higher and farther away. Before 'The Event', they said the world would end in five years. Yesterday, they said it would in twenty-five, probably, and this morning the question responded with fifty years, with only a vanishingly small 2.32795% chance of the world ending within 5 years like the original charted path. Other questions about how life was going to be like often got wildly different answers, a few of which actually changed mid-answering. Life ahead was rather uncertain, but it was going to be bright.


A/N: Well, not much here, though there was a bit of continuation of a prologue which I never actually posted, but I did write. Might post it later on. This was also technically a prolongment of Interlude 1.a than a new chapter, now that I think about it, so, *shrug*

Also, I'd like to mention that I'm trying something new here to try and get more chapters out sooner here: Shorter chapters.

Other people are pretty good at it, so I'm just trying to follow that idea, especially since, if you look at it right, every ".1/.2/.3/ETC." in Worm/Worm fanfics are actually partial chapters, or chapters in an arc, depending on how you look at it. So that's what I'm trying to take off the pressure and allow more chapters out.

Okay, story aside, I've got thoughts, and I've got plans, and I've got a reputation with myself for not being able to live up to them. Let's pray that I can start changing that. Additionally, anyone got any idea what breeds Brutus, Angelica, and -...I forget the last one- are? Cause I wanna say hi to them before we catch up to cannon.

Also, it has been mentioned earlier in the thread (I think), but I feel it must be said in-story: There is a reason why PRT are not investigating "Taylor"s Master/Stranger situation on Sophia: She actually has some self-preservation. If Sophia told them that she was getting Imp'd by the girl she bullied, do you think it would go over well?