I checked my watch, six-thirty, good right on time, the janitor gave me a suspicious look, but he didn't kick me out when I came inside with him. It was early enough that the only people at school were the track team, but they would be busy until 7:30 so I had at least an hour before Sophia would be needing her locker. Emma and her posse were harder to pin but they were certainly not getting in before seven.
I placed my new books into my locker, took a minute to change the combination from the standard on the new lock, maybe they'd actually stay out of it now. I always suspected that my lock was broken in some way I couldn't figure out. I ran through the plan in my head, thankfully there weren't any functional cctv cameras in the school so there would be no footage of what I was about to do. I frowned, actually a cctv would have been handy when I got trapped.
Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves I walked slowly and as casually as I could past the lockers, hands in my hoodie pocket, idly fingering the clay balls I ad stored inside. As I walked past Emma's locker, I discretely took one of the balls and quickly pushed it through the small grate on the locker without breaking a step.
I eyed the janitor in the locker room, he was just mopping the floor, only looked at me to make sure I wasn't walking where he was trying to clean. There was no indication that he saw me place anything in Emma's locker. Doing the same in Madison and Sophia's lockers was comparatively much easier since it was out of sight of the janitor.
Face deliberately blank, I casually walked out of the locker room and made my way to the library, taking a book that I'd already read out I sat in a semi-secluded corner of the library, not that anyone was inside yet.
I checked my watch, 6:49, that all took longer than I thought. I lifted the book to pretend to read and set to work.
-x-
Nestled snugly on top of a messy pile of workbooks, a slightly squished blob of clay began to wriggle around, its top split open allowing an orderly procession of ants, termites, bread bugs and a singular spider. The ants quickly began using their mandibles to cut up the clay and picked it up, meanwhile the termites and the spider scurried around in a spiral pattern until one found the wall off the locker. The termites stopped their spiralling and instead joined the lone spider, a few limbed on top and were carried to the top of the locker.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone in Winslow, the lockers weren't fully flush with the wall, at least not on the inside. At the top of the locker, on the door's side is a small lip, it was only half a centimetre high and protruded into the locker a few centimetres. Space enough for hairpins and the occasional hair tie. Or in this case a spider and its cargo.
The spider took multiple trips, carrying a few termites every time, meanwhile the ants, laden with small chunks of clay each, slowly walked up the same wall, first depositing the clay in a small pile, then crawling along the lip, teaming up to clear the immediate area of the clay of any obstacles. A few ants went down to pick up and carry a few straggler termites to the clay pile. They joined their fellows in chewing the clay and got to work building an enclosed space, complete with a removable cover.
A few Bread Bugs flew up lazily, carrying a larva each and entered their new home settling down to wait. A generous amount (for this small population) of breadcrumbs were carted in by some ants before the spider, having established a small web further along the lip awkwardly used its limbs to pick up the cover and place it nearby, connecting that to the main structure with a piece of silk so it would not get lost if the locker shook.
The termites dutifully walked into the spider's web and allowed themselves to be captured and cocooned in silk by the spider.
The spare clay from this project was taken by the ants in miniscule pieces as the ants exited the locker one by one, lazily tracking a line to a grate in the ceiling to the long abandoned aircon/heating system, their destination marked by a single spider just in the entrance. Like the termites this spider allowed itself to be captured by this spider and stored. They were soon joined by another group of ants. It was a little while later and more sporadically when a third and final group of ants came into the grate.
-x-
I let out a shaky breath, and almost jumped at how much noisier the room was now that I was actually paying attention. I checked my watch, 7:26, way closer than I was fully comfortable with; but not too bad overall. The last group of insects, the one in Sophia's locker were still busy moving the termites up the locker wall when massive vibrations in the locker were the only warning I got before Sophia threw the locker open. I immediately had them move under the books, hoping that she didn't see them or the few that got squished when she roughly grabbed her school wear out of the locker.
I managed to get the survivors to complete the task while she was showering, I'd have to get the spider to remove the few corpses, lest they arouse suspicion or warrant getting an exterminator. Not that Winslow would ever hire one.
The last thing I did in the lockers was having an ant which stayed behind in each locker move to the top of the door, so that they would swing with the door. This way I could note when each member of the Trio opened their locker door in the morning and wouldn't have to come to school super early to sit around like an idiot.
Speak of the devil, I felt the ant on Sophia's door swing outwards, time is…7:36, I took out my math book, opened to a random page and placed it in its spot in a table I had made last night. It was labelled with bird names that started with E,M,&S so that it just looked like an odd birdwatching chart documenting the time I spot a particular bird. Weird, but not incriminating, just in case someone took my book.
I stayed in the library all the way until the bell rang, I still wasn't sure how I was going to stealthily get the bugs onto the girls without being able to see them but I should be fine without it. I estimated that I'd have at least a week before they start doing anything really nasty. I could sneak the bugs into their bag pretty easily but then it wouldn't help me during classtime and lunch breaks, the times when I really need to know where they are.
My best bet is going to be having them go underneath their shirts, keeping to the seams where it would already be rough so an extra little bump would not be noticed. I'd swallowed my own disgust and had one of the bugs crawl to the said spot so I could check if it was noticeable, whilst it was discrete I'd only tested it with shirts. It would probably be a very different story with blouses or other clothes, so I had to use this week to discretely test this all.
The first day back in school was both more and less shitty than I expected it to be, my guess was correct, the Trio didn't openly do anything to me. But they did have their flunkies — and everyone who wanted to curry favour to them, or seem cool to their friends, or whatever shitty excuse they liked to use to justify their behaviour— Pretending that they smelt something terrible whenever I was near. They'd pinch their nose or ask their friends if they could smell something rotten.
It was horrid, but not all to different to what I had to suffer through before, I just blinked the tears back and continued on, pretending that I couldn't hear them. Or smell the horrid sickly rot, permeating through the air, heavy, like a thick miasma. Staining me, swallowing me.
I became aware of a bug on my hand moving, I looked down and realised it was because I was shaking. A hand to my face confirmed that I was crying too, I tried to wipe it as discretely as possible, someone definitely saw me cry just then but there's nothing I can do about that but move on. The day was almost finished at that point anyways, so I just refocused on the lesson and shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets to hide the trembling and kept focusing on the lesson.
Throughout the day I had various insects in the school sneak onto students as practise, I'd initially planned contingencies for if anybody noticed bugs trying to intelligently sneak onto them. However, to my shock, it was actually stupidly easy to do, so long as the bug is silent and sticks to crawling on clothes (people notice it when they crawl on the skin or hair) nobody noticed a thing. And if they did, regardless of whatever odd location they found the bug they just slapped them off and kept on with their day.
And as for where to keep the bugs on them I figured out the perfect place, their pockets. I'd initially waved it off as a bad idea since pockets are a high traffic area and I was worried that they would get squashed or found there. The trick was to keep the bugs inside the pocket at the top corner away from the opening, where the stitching is. Its at an angle where it never gets hit when people use their pockets, and its also out of the way when someone has their hands in their pockets. It was also stupidly easy to fly a bread bug at waist height directly into the pocket with no one the wiser. It was perfect.
When school finally ended I went straight home and immediately wrote down all my observations over the day, spent half an hour on a new attempt with the caterpillars in the garden, the idea this time was to set them to eating just the weeds at the same time as I did my homework. That way I would eventually lose focus of that whilst still being busy controlling them. Hopefully that will work, I'm definitely running out of good ideas for that test.
Once I'd done all that I got back to sitting in front of my computer and griping about the abysmally slow internet as I attempted to finish all the cape profiles I was doing. Giving it up as a lost cause after spending 20 entire minutes staring at a half-loaded page, I made a note to myself to visit the public library this week. I was hoping to avoid using the computers there as it would be far easier to monitor what I was doing; all it would take is someone looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing. So, I'd have to stick to easily explainable things like browsing PHO online, and the profiles can be explained as a school project. But I would have to be very careful about researching bugs as that will definitely start raising red flags after I start using them to fight crime.
The alternative is that I find a job that I could use to pay for better internet, or the ever-present alternative of the Wards. Just the thought of going to them made me feel very uneasy, with my luck they would be worse than the girls at school. Especially since my power didn't have any immediate use inn crime fighting, not unless I want to go around stinging criminals which just seemed like a great way to get arrested for assault. My power does seem awfully villainous.
Either way, the Wards weren't an option and jobs weren't exactly overflowing in Brockton Bay, not to mention that it would be a huge time-sink which defeats the entire point of using it to get faster internet. I think I'll have to just use the library carefully, maybe find a way to use bugs as sentries? I couldn't think of a good way to go about doing that; so, I just put it into the growing list of power-related ideas into my power journal.
After dinner that night, once dad had finally gone to bed, I sat at my table glaring at a blank piece of paper. One of the aspects of heroing that I was neglecting, or more accurately, procrastinating was my name and costume. Obviously, I couldn't just go out as Taylor, I'd be lucky to get a week before the Empire abducts my dad and forces me into their service. So obviously I need some sort of hero identity, a name and costume at the very least. Which was where all my problems were coming from, well one of many problems.
First and foremost were my powers, they were not exactly what came to mind when one thought hero. When you think hero you think Alexandria, super speed, strength, something flashy, a bright in the darkness. You know, something inspirational. Not, the ability to bring down a plague of insects, If someone told me that the Merchants just got a new cape and I had to guess what powers they had I might guess bug control. Hell, I wouldn't blink if the Slaughterhouse Nine got a bug controlling cape.
So, I had to figure out a way to not become nightmare fuel for the people I'm trying to save, which started with a non-villainous, bug themed, hero name. Or it would start with that if they existed. Most insect or spider related name either sounded villainous or was taken, like seriously, Swarm was both too villainous and taken. Scarab would have been nice, but it was also taken by some Egyptian cape. Eventually I just gave up trying to find a name and just went to my second problem, designing a costume. For starters I have very little means to buy the materials for a costume, absolutely no way to do so discretely in any case. Not to mention the absolute absence of any fashion knowledge or ability on my part. Most of my clothing choices revolved around hiding as much of myself as possible or just for pure function.
This was going to be a pain in the ass wasn't it?
-x-
I was no closer to solving the costume problem a few weeks later, not that I let tit bother me too much, especially since most of my other projects were progressing way better. My school bugging project was working perfectly, I'd solved most of the kinks, devised an insectile courier system in the old ducts that ran through the school to deliver food to the bread bugs that now lived in the unnoticed homes hidden in the trios lockers. Monitoring their location did not take very long to get used to, I would just know throughout the day where those particular bugs were. It was literally just like how you could instinctively know where your arm or leg was. So now I didn't have to really hide every day during lunchtimes, I could just leave if I felt the bugs approaching. I've started carrying all the books that I need in my bag, while heavy and uncomfortable it removed the need to touch my locker, which was good because I start shaking when I'm near my locker. The faculty didn't even bother changing which locker I used, just cleaned it, changed the locks and called it a day. They didn't even clean it properly; I detected a few maggots in the seams of the locker where they didn't clean all the blood.
The last experiment that I conducted with the caterpillars was a success, finally. So now I had a way to give bugs commands for when I wasn't around, It was still a crapshoot as to whether I'd do it right but at least I knew it was possible. Through that I've begun stockpiling some of the more dangerous little beasties in the storm sewers below the house in what was a rapidly expanding network of small burrows running along the roof of the tunnels built by my ever-dutiful termites. Though it was starting to result in some serious logistical problems, sourcing the dirt has already cost our backyard about an inch of soil, I was scared of taking more because it will start being noticeable at some point. Also, in a few months it was going to be spring, and the last thing I want is the heavy rains on the Bay to dissolve these burrows and kill all of the bugs I have stored. So, I needed to find a way to waterproof it all in the next month at the latest. Feeding the bugs I was putting in was also starting to be a bit of a hassle, The insects I was keeping in the sewers were of the more dangerous variety, hornets, bees, Brown Recluses, black widows, anything that had some real sting to it. Which was going to be great when I start going out and fighting crimes, to have a stock of fighters that I could replenish with but they were almost all very territorial. The only way to have them all live there without killing each other was to have them all under orders to just relax and stay in their burrows. The Black Widows were the worst, without my interference they would just start murdering each other so I had to completely suppress their instincts and have them just relax.
Which meant that they weren't fulfilling their normal hunting roles and had to have flies flown into their burrows so that they could be easily killed and eaten. Which was fine until about a week into February when the fly population started to take a sharp dip in my area, thankfully I'd started running by then so I was able to source flies from the adjacent neighbourhoods. It was a pain at first, but I've gotten much better at moving larger amounts of flies discretely. Well, it was actually pretty easy to do, my max range was about a block and a half, or more precisely about 150-160m, the exact amount depended on some variable that I am yet to discern. So it is trivial to just have a bunch of flies 100m up in a scattered pattern, it was completely invisible from the ground and its actually pretty common for flies to be up there in the first place, it was what cued me into that particular strategy.
So I could at least feed the bugs that I had but until I could find a way to increase the food I can bring them their population had reached a plateau. It is still an impressive population mind you, hundreds of each. I had an idea for how to massively increase food production for them but it required giving far more complex commands then normal. See the idea is that I could have the bees massively multiply, get pollen off of plants and make honey in excess, the other bugs could either eat the honey or all the extra bees I make them breed. Which would be amazing, I'd be able to have orders of magnitude more insects to use, but, and it was a big but, I would have to make sure that the bees weren't discovered while they were foraging. Which seemed like an impossible task, it was one of the limitations that I've discovered in my ability to give semi-autonomous tasks to my insects. See, in order to get the bees to act in the way that I want them to I would have to have the follow some task along the lines of "forage for pollen but stay out of sight of people". Bees it turns out could recognise people and were one of the insects that I've realised had a reasonably high capacity for performing tasks outside of their normal experience. But getting them to 'hide' was an issue. Hiding is not exactly a concept that a bee can conceptualise and instructing a bee to merely stay out of sight of humanoid figures did nothing to keep them truly hidden. So, unless I could find a way to incorporate that concept into my commands I would have to hold off on operation Bee.
The burning in my lungs took my out of my musing as I continued my run, I've only been doing it for the past two weeks and I still wasn't sure whether it was worth it, how people willingly put themselves through this I don't know. But I did not have an option, not if I wanted to be a hero, imagine a hero that couldn't even keep up with some crook running off, that would be massively embarrassing. Also, what sort of hero has a paunch, I'd never get taken seriously. It had quickly become my running mantra. I've been told by the people in the hospital that I should take up some form of exercise once I was recovered enough, apparently it's meant to improve my mood but I fail to see how. Stockholm syndrome maybe?
Finally seeing my salvation approaching I sprinted the last portion, depositing the flies that were following me in the sky into their respective burrows for all of the actually useful insects. I documented todays exact numbers as well as whose been fed, their health etc in a spreadsheet on my computer. Doing administration on this level was stupidly easy for my power, I knew exactly how many Insects were in my control, where they are, their general health, their species, tons of information that I just knew. I could also tap into their instincts, albeit far more easily and to a greater degree when I've done some research on them and knew how stuff worked.
I'd had to yet again transfer things to a whole new notebook, at this point my various hero activities were spread across four notebooks, one with general hero stuff, I'd finished the profiles for all of the active heroes and Villains in the Bay, their respective groups, likely activities, and it was steadily filling with any new info I found, almost all of the current public goings and speculated goings on of capes in the city were in that book. A second book was my hero book, It had the map of the sewer system that I printed out at the school library, updated to show the extent of the burrows I'd created. I had a list of the things I would need to do and stuff I needed to get to not be a total idiot on the first night out. I had managed to stumble on an old PHO thread that Shadow Stalker had made back before she joined the wards. It was a comprehensive list of the things that were absolutely necessary for a patrolling solo vigilante, there was something odd about the post but it was extremely helpful so I just put it out of mind. She'd put having a burner phone in bold with huge underlines as item number 1 to buy, I'd swallowed my distaste of the thing and bought an old used Nokia from the Lords market. The third book was full of observations of my powers, various tests I'd been doing with it, power ideas, and insect facts along with possible ways to use them later. I was finding myself getting surprisingly invested in the weird and wonderful world of insects, maybe it was some strange psychological effect of my powers, or maybe it was just the kinship I felt with my fellow lowly beings. Either way if my heroing doesn't work out I could definitely see myself becoming an entomologist or something. I also had a still annoyingly blank section dedicated to my future name and costume; well the name part was blank since I'd had a few brainwaves regarding the costume at least. That thread from Shadow Stalker made me realise that I didn't have to be some bright shining hero, I could operate in, well the shadows. So I started designing potential costumes in a realm I was far far more comfortable with, dark greys and mottled brown, something that could blend in with a swarm of insects. How I am going to make it still eludes me, but I still had at least a month or two before I was fit enough to feel comfortable running around the city stopping crime. The last book was just filled with the day-to day documenting of my insects, it was rather sparse as most of the relevant information is on my computer but I wanted a physical copy just in case my computer freaked out and needed a wipe, again.
All in all, it was seriously starting to get a little bit unwieldy and difficult to conceal. I've almost been walked in on at home whilst writing in one of the books on a few occasions. I don't know how heroes keep all this stuff hidden from their parents, but I was getting the impression that I was doing an unusual amount of pre-planning. The research I did showed that a large amount of new independent heroes die or are recruited and/or outed within their first six months active. Which was worrying until I realised that most get their powers and are running around in a crappy homemade costume within the week.
-x-
Ignoring the stupid taunts and childish bullshit from the other kids in school had become far easier lately, I think it was because my attention was now almost always split by the goings on in the ducts above the school. Whenever they were being particularly painful I could just focus on making a spider weave more and more intricate patterns, I've been getting a little better at splitting my attention but doing a task that intricate and outside of their instincts took up a lot of my focus. Case in point, right now, the Trio were doing that thing where they had everyone they could con into helping indirectly mock me for the whole day. I would be much more broken up about it if I wasn't abundantly aware of the amount of their plots I've foiled by simply being on the other side of the school to them at all times outside of class. I am a little worried that they might try to do something big again but since they and their biggest cronies were bugged, sneaking up on me should be near impossible.
"Are you even paying attention? Maybe you should have stayed in the hospital, I doubt grey would look any better than you than those rags."
I stopped myself from giving some sort of biting or sarcastic remark, I've been oddly chatty lately, probably because the fear of speaking up is diminished when there wasn't much they could do to me. Or because dad and I have been talking way more, he was unsurprisingly a treasure trove of information about the utilities of Brockton Bay, so we always had a fallback topic, strange as it was, when we were talking.
I just stared at her, why do I really care what she thinks of me, like seriously, she's a bitch. She can think whatever she wants, it was a weirdly freeing thought.
"Yea whatever, I don't care." I just said blandly before walking off, I could feel her following me, so I didn't sit down anywhere. I glanced back, she was red in the face, I think she's legitimately angry, for what reason I don't know, I was hoping the neutral response would let me leave without her wanting to punish me somehow. It was the reason I didn't say any of the far more scathing or mocking responses I could have done otherwise.
I was still pondering her weird reaction on my walk home, it was making me feel both uneasy and anxious for some reason. It felt like there was this pressure on my chest, I felt like crying too but I could not tell why. I needed to take my mind off this so while I passed the next house I had a spider come down off a web and settle into my hoodie's pocket. Having it start spinning its web and tying that into knots was almost reflex at this point. The odd anxious feeling didn't go away but at least I was a bit distracted. I took out a braided piece of string and gave it an experimental tug.
Huh.
I knew intellectually that spider silk is pretty strong, but even just this bit, nine strands put in three braids took some doing to tear. I could use it to make ropes to tie up criminals I catch, untraceable and free.
I stopped walking.
"Oh my God I'm such an idiot."
I ran the rest of the way home.
-x-
I really need to find a different way to end chapters, it'll get real old real quick doing that bit. Oh well, anyways im surprised that I finished this so quickly, I expected it to take me two weeks at the least to finish this chapter but I got inspired and wrote it in two sessions. I swear she will go fight crime eventually, fingers crossed she'll be going out for her first patrol next chapter.
