Author's Note: The bare essentials: This is a collection of Worm snippets, ideas that I want to explore, covering anywhere from 2,000 to 20,000 words each, and generally striving to tell a small, self-contained story within that space. Most will be one-shots, most will be alt-powers or AUs, but there will be exceptions to both rules. For now, please enjoy my first official foray into the world of Worm fanfiction! Not knowing what, if anything, has been changed from canon is part of the fun of this one, so I won't say just yet.
Also, for any of my readers who follow me for my works in another fandom and are investigating this strange new thing I've posted: Turn back unless you've had the experience of reading Worm. This is not a fictional universe you want to spoil for yourself by reading fanfiction first, and this one-shot in particular assumes prior knowledge of the characters, terminology, and canon storyline. On the bright side, Worm is freely available, just search 'parahumans' and 'Worm' and go to the wordpress site that pops up.
Now, on with the one-shot.
AU: Part of the System
Shadow Stalker loathed console duty with a passion she usually reserved for targets she could maim. The console, a gleaming monolith to inaction and cowardice by helping from safety, mocked her with its invincibility. She couldn't tranquilize it, couldn't arrest it, and couldn't justify mangling it with any of the other tools at her disposal. She couldn't even phase through it; all the electricity coursing through its eldritch Tinkertech interior would fry her in an instant.
She considered hiring a Tinker to craft a computer virus meant to inflict pain on previously unfeeling circuitry as she flicked through the various channels and watched Kid Win and Gallant patrolling in the rich part of town. Sure, it would maybe get her in trouble if they traced it back to her, but as far as she knew, 'vandalism' wasn't on the list of conditions that would break her probation. Getting revenge on the machine that she was currently tied to might be worth it… If only she could be sure it wouldn't be replaced within hours. She would have to incapacitate Kid Win and Armsmaster first, and maybe Squealer just to be safe…
Though if Squealer somehow got her drug-addled brain on the topic of repairing the console, what came out the other end might be something Sophia was justified in hunting down and peppering with her real arrows, so there would be an upside.
"Console," Kid Win said, "We're checking in. Are you there?"
Sophia noticed that Kid Win and Gallant were back at the Rig, heading inside. "Why?" She was fairly sure they were supposed to be patrolling for a lot longer than that; they'd barely been out an hour.
"You really should read your weekly news emails, Shadow Stalker," Gallant sighed. "We're supposed to be meeting the new Protectorate member in ten minutes. All of us."
Sophia responded by cutting off the line between them and the console, quickly hammering through the closing routine – slacking on the procedure would just land her more procedure, it wasn't worth it – and standing from the hated seat. At least this meeting was getting her off console duty early.
A quick search on her phone for her PRT email account – which would be dusty with disuse if email could gather dust – yielded the weekly update from Armsmaster. It was as dry and filled with pointless information as she remembered, but at the bottom there was a notice about a meeting involving… Yes, a new hero being introduced to them. And something about an administration change, but that was probably just Armsmaster taking time out of his busy schedule to somehow put down Dauntless on a technicality.
The meeting was in the conference room just across the hall from where she was. She slapped her mask on, checked her crossbow, both to be sure it was in good order and to be sure she hadn't left any bloodstains after her last patrol, and made her way there, ghosting through the door to make an entrance.
Her entrance was wasted on those already present; of the Wards, only Gallant was looking in her direction. He gave her a welcoming smile, the overly emotional sap that he was. She ignored his pathetic existence and claimed a chair near the door, next to Aegis.
"Anyone know why we're here?" Clockblocker asked from across the table. He turned from left to right, dramatically considering everyone present. "I'm only here because Vista dragged me across the hall."
Vista scowled at him. "You should read your emails," she said firmly.
"I was just telling Shadow Stalker that," Gallant chimed in. "We should all pay more attention to our official email accounts. I know it's hard keeping track of it sometimes, but there's a lot of important information you miss if you ignore it."
"I'm an extrovert, I like interacting with people," Clockblocker whined. "Computers aren't people, unless someone gets a Tinker drunk and points them in the right direction…"
The door chose that moment to swing open again, revealing Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and…
Sophia twisted in her chair to get a better look at the third costumed figure. White interwoven mesh gleamed from behind pale yellow armor panels, covering the joints and vulnerable points of a tall, thin figure. A full facemask with matching white and yellow highlights offered a bright, cheery, but slightly inhuman visage, one with yellow-tinted lenses built in. A trail of scale-like overlapping plates covered the back of their head, merging helmet and costume in a way Sophia could tell was designed to look good while offering absolutely no advantages to an enemy in close-quarters combat.
Whoever this was, they'd clearly had to make sacrifices when they went to the costume design department. The overall image was firmly on the 'bright, appealing,' side of things, far more than any self-respecting hero would ever allow. In exchange, it would be practical, decent in a fight, and was so obscuring almost nothing about the wearer could be determined from appearance alone, save for their height. This was someone more concerned with function than appearance.
Armsmaster and Miss Militia stopped at the front of the conference room, in front of the whiteboard. The new hero stood between them, his or her eyes obscured behind those same yellow lenses.
"Wards, meet Weaver," Miss MIlitia announced. "Weaver, the Wards. Aegis, Gallant, Browbeat, Vista, Kid Win, Shadow Stalker, and Clockblocker, in no particular order."
The other Wards smiled, waved, or cracked crappy jokes. Shadow Stalker crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. Her only hope for this new hero was that he or she would be the right kind of hero, but that was unlikely. Folding to the Image department and prioritizing defense precluded that almost immediately.
"Wards." The voice was a buzzing undertone, a chirping overtone, a mingling of a thousand noises into one semi-coherent set of sounds. Sophia found herself reaching for her crossbow on instinct alone, though she forced herself to do no more than put a hand on it, ready to draw. "Good to meet you."
"I may have to tweak your helmet's pitch modifier before you go out in public," Armsmaster remarked. "Stick to the minimal setting for now."
"Probably a good idea," Weaver remarked. Her voice was much less distorted, but a buzzing undertone still emphasized every word in a peculiar way.
"Where do I sign up for a helmet that makes me sound like that?" Clockblocker blurted out.
"In my case," Weaver replied, "the helmet is just helping me be more clear." She waved a hand vaguely, indicating her current, only slightly unnatural voice. "That sound is all my own."
"Oh, cool," Clockblocker replied, shrinking back a little. Sophia could practically see the thoughts crawling through his dense head. If she sounded like that normally, and her costume covered up everywhere she might show even the slightest hint of skin…
"Weaver will be announced to the public next Tuesday," Armsmaster said stiffly, breaking the awkward silence with all the subtlety of Skidmark on a rampage, if less profanely. "Additionally, the Director and I have decided to put her directly in charge of the Wards, as opposed to the split responsibilities Miss Militia and I have held prior to now."
"Why?" Vista blurted out, before wincing and shaking her head. "Not that I'm objecting," she said, trying and failing to sound older than she actually was, "but Weaver is new, right? Not a transfer from somewhere else?"
"It's because she's new," Miss Militia explained. "She'll be taking on the role of Ward supervisor in a much more active capacity than any of us can manage with our other responsibilities."
"I think," Weaver added in her only slightly uncanny voice, "that the idea is I can jump right in and learn the extra responsibilities alongside all of the other things I need to learn anyway."
"Weaver will be operating under my oversight for the first six months," Armsmaster assured them, "but she will be operating in full capacity. I'll send you all a longer explanation once we're done here, so you know exactly what her position involves, but this meeting isn't long enough to go over that."
"Whatever," was Shadow Stalker's muttered opinion on the subject. A new hero or Miss Militia or Armsmaster, the only thing that changed was the personality enforcing the asinine restrictions the Wards worked under. Nothing would change, and Weaver would be sucked into patrols and more active duty the moment she finished the mountains of training she was undoubtedly having heaped on her.
"Well, as the current Wards leader, I'm looking forward to getting to know you," Aegis volunteered, reaching up for his helmet–
Weaver held out a hand. "Don't do that," she requested.
Aegis stared at her, his hands still on his helmet. "Why not?" he asked. "We're colleagues, it's–"
"It's not something I'm willing to reciprocate," Weaver interrupted, her voice as soft as something so eerie could get. Sophia was not getting used to the sound; the more Weaver talked, the more it set her on edge. "Personal reasons."
That even more firmly cemented Sophia's working assessment, that Weaver was either disfigured by her power, or an outright Case 53. One so uncomfortable with herself that she wanted to hide her appearance even from her allies, and who was humanoid enough that she could feasibly do so. It would have been an interesting combination... If she was interested in cowards.
"What if I don't care if you unmask to me in return?" Aegis asked.
"Then go ahead, but it's your choice," Weaver allowed. "I'd rather you not, though. Not right now."
"Unmasking can wait," Gallant suggested. "What do you want to share, Weaver?"
"What's your power?" Kid Win asked, hot on his heels.
"My power…" Weaver spread her arms, and a riot of color spread out from a dozen different places. Butterflies spread their wings all across her armor, bright flashes of color against the brilliant white. An entire flight of butterflies appeared from behind the odd flaps on the back of her neck and circled around her helmet.
"I control bugs," she added, unnecessarily. "All the bugs."
Most of the Wards didn't get what that meant right away; Vista, in particular, was probably straining too hard not to act like the child she was to think about it. Shadow Stalker, though, was not distracted by the colorful cloud, or the way Weaver's two-tone armor was now a rainbow vibrant enough to drive the E88 into a rage.
All bugs. Including all the ones that PR would never let a hero be associated with, like cockroaches and spiders and centipedes… The horror-movie images that knowledge conjured when she thought of what she could do with it…
Maybe Weaver wouldn't be so bad after all, once she got comfortable and stopped caring so much about the rules. There might be a real predator hidden behind that obscuring costume, something dangerous.
Shadow Stalker certainly hoped so.
"She's a raging bitch," Sophia ranted, flopping back on her bed. "Stuck-up rule-follower with a stick up her ass and a grudge against anyone effective." Her crossbow and costume were both spotless, so she didn't give the pile she had dumped them in any thought beyond shoving it under her bed. Her siblings knew her room was off-limits when she was in it, and when she wasn't, there was nothing for them to find.
"Maybe she really is a bitch," Emma suggested, the phone projecting her voice with a tinny quality to it. Sophia had tossed it on the bed, and it had landed speaker face-down, so the covers were muffling her. Despite not getting any action on her patrol, Sophia was bone-tired, so she didn't have the energy to reach over and flip it right-side up. "You said you've never seen what's under her mask, right? She could be a dog-faced monster for all we know."
"Wouldn't be my guess," Sophia muttered. She'd never so much as seen a spot of skin on the older hero; Weaver was never around except in-costume. If she had shown herself to any of the adult heros, Sophia didn't know about it. But if she had to guess…
"What do you think?" Emma asked. "It's got to be something."
"Swarm of bugs," Sophia offered. It wasn't breaking the unwritten rules if she was just speculating. "Just bugs, operating that costume like it's a set of power armor. The most disgusting Changer form ever, except she can't use her powers unless she's in it." Or, even worse, she was always in that form. It could be powerful, Weaver had shown the city exactly how powerful, but the user made it such a worthless waste of power…
"Fireflies for eyes," Emma suggested. "Maggots for insides."
Sophia had to choke out a laugh at that; Emma could be positively brutal at the most random times. "Should have called Taylor all of that. Too bad Weaver's not a Ward, you could have made a thing of it."
"As if that drop-out could be a predator like you," Emma scoffed. "I bet you'll catch her next time you round up the Merchant druggies."
"That'll be never, the way Weaver is riding me," Sophia groaned, her good mood souring. "I thought Armsmaster was bad with following regulations. At least he had his Tinkering to distract him. Weaver never gets distracted." Not from her. When Weaver was on console, she had no chance to slip away, not without getting written up and cited for any number of things before she'd even gotten back from her patrol.
"She'll lighten up," Emma offered. It would have been more reassuring if Sophia didn't know her friend was just parroting back her own overconfident words on the subject back when Weaver was first introduced. It had been a month, and Weaver was only getting worse.
"It's not insecurity," Sophia groaned. "She's the worst kind of naive. Thinks what I do, how I am, is wrong. Never mind I'm the best Ward of the lot, it's all about how I act. Bitch." Lectures on interacting with civilians, lectures on appropriate force, lectures on following procedure, it was like she had her own talking, judgmental rulebook spouting nonsense at her every time she put a foot wrong! And then there were the punishments, because god forbid she mouth off to a teammate, or slip away on patrol, or put a few thugs in full-body casts in the process of saving someone.
"Maybe she'll walk into something too big for her and get put in her place," Emma suggested vaguely.
"She's not Taylor," Sophia reminded her. "She knows what she's doing." The coward didn't go on patrols all that often, if only because she had a genuine talent for doing paperwork. That was the one good thing about Weaver taking over with the Wards; some of the paperwork they'd all been doing when off-duty was now her responsibility, though it never slowed her down for a minute. The spiders and ants in her little side-office were always working, tracking ink with their little limbs even when Weaver wasn't in the room…
She smiled at the memory of a panicked Clockblocker telling them all about that discovery. Weaver was good for freaking out the more squeamish of her so-called teammates, at least. 'Bug Sister', Clockblocker had called her when they found out she could see and hear through her bugs, and the nickname had stuck. Though most of them seemed to be getting used to her as the weeks passed…
"What did she do today?" Emma asked.
"Weaver?" Sophia let her eyes close of their own accord. "Training, agility drills, 'rescue the civilian'. All the Wards were there, but she made me play the civilian every single time for the first hour." Humiliating, pointless, and obviously a ham-fisted attempt to make her think about being in the position of the victim… As if she didn't know. There was a reason she was a predator, not guileless prey. Once was enough for a lifetime.
"That's stupid," Emma said.
"Then there was a mandatory course on deescalation for us all to take," Sophia continued bitterly. "Like it was a movie, but with no popcorn and questionnaires afterward." Weaver was insistent all of the namby-pamby 'training' videos she had them watch were standard Ward courses Brockton Bay had been ignoring. Sophia highly doubted that; Weaver was just being obnoxious.
"What's deescalation?"
"Talking to people to make them not want to fight, but even stupider than it sounds," Sophia explained. "I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. Weaver got on my case about that, too. Blah blah, negotiation skills increase your options in a potentially dangerous situation, blah blah blah. Even if it did, it increases the options I don't care about. Then I had a patrol with Vista, and wouldn't you know it, she wanted to chatter about the ways she and Weaver can combine their powers, for the whole patrol. Every time I tried to shut the little twerp up, she'd just ignore me and keep talking."
"Sounds rough," Emma remarked. Then she kept talking, her voice brightening up. "I know what will cheer you up. We could go find out what actually happened to Taylor, do some looking. If she's doing something illegal, you really could bust her for it."
Sophia didn't particularly care about Taylor; the girl was gone, and out of sight might as well be nonexistent with such a waste of space. She only mattered insofar as Emma had built herself up around the idea that she was better than her former best friend, and Sophia had been hoping Taylor dropping out would have resolved that little hang-up.
Still, doing something with Emma did sound fun, and if she got to rough somebody up along the way, she could let off some steam. Taylor, a random druggy, whoever. "Yeah, let's do that. Saturday?"
"Sunday, I've got a modeling job on Saturday," Emma replied. "That good with you?"
"Weaver's off on Sunday," Sophia sighed. She would have to take off on Sunday if she wanted to hang out with Emma, shuffle a few things around, and that meant more time under Weaver's watchful plethora of eyes later… "But yeah, I can do that."
Saturday rolled around, pulled up to the curb in the morning, and proceeded to idle like an old truck whose driver fell asleep after parking. A truck with a faulty 'check engine' light and broken seatbelts digging into the passenger's chest while she sat there and watched the world crawl by…
"How's the English homework going, Shadow Stalker?" Weaver's voice made her twitch, not because it was creepy – which it still was – but because she had grown to truly hate the woman behind the mask. Or the swarm of bugs with a mind in it, whatever Weaver really was.
"Like shit," she answered, slapping her notebook shut before Weaver could see her attempts at an extended metaphor. Weaver was on the other side of the room, standing by door leading out into the hall, but distance didn't really matter with her. "Why do you care?"
"Because you're supposed to be on console for Vista and Browbeat, starting five minutes ago," Weaver replied. "Shoo." The butterflies on her arm fluttered into an arrow pointing at Sophia's technological nemesis, then returned to her armor.
Sophia picked up her mask from where she had left it on the table, and slowly set it into place on her head. She had unmasked to Weaver – everyone had once she gave the okay, simply because it was easier that way – but Weaver had a thing about being in costume when on the console. Something about getting into the mindset… Weaver had a lot of stupid opinions along those lines, like she had read a few workplace management books and taken the drivel contained within to heart.
It was stupid, but Weaver also had the authority to assign all sorts of frustrating, time-wasting punishments, and Sophia was getting fed up with missing patrols, and being stuck on patrols in the safer parts of town when she did go out.
The console loomed against the far wall, complicated and boring. She sat down, logged in, and turned on the comm feed to the two patrolling Wards. According to their GPS signals, they were nowhere interesting, though their scheduled patrol had them skirting past ABB territory near the middle of their route.
Thankfully, they weren't talking; Vista seemed to be doing her 'professional, experienced Ward' routine for anyone who happened to be watching, and Browbeat was a man of few words. Also a man of few lasting memories, but that was his extremely minor Stranger power at work. As it turned out, there was more to him than minor self-biokinesis. It didn't make him any more useful. Maybe if he ever got into a real fight…
Weaver wandered down the hall containing all of the Wards' rooms and knocked on Gallant's door. Sophia hadn't even known he was around, but sure enough, he answered. They exchanged a few words, then he went back into his room. She did the same for Kid Win, who only briefly emerged with a tangle of wires and a soldering iron, then came back out into the main area.
"There's going to be a movie night next Saturday," Weaver remarked as she moved to open the cupboards in the mini-kitchen area. "It was in an email, but I figured I'd tell you."
"Will you be there?" Sophia muttered to herself.
"No," Weaver responded, answering without a pause. "It's a team-building exercise for the Wards. You're invited."
"Do I have to, or is it optional?" she asked. Given the choice, she'd rather go out on a good, non-supervised patrol with that time.
"I'd say it's optional, but you'd never go if I did…" Weaver hummed to herself, an eerie buzzing noise that filled the room. "Your choice."
"Fuck that," Sophia said vehemently.
"Too bad for you," Weaver said. "Don't forget to fill out the after-action report once they're done." She stalked out of the room, her movements just a little too precise and jerky to sit right with Sophia.
Sophia returned her attention to the console… Only to find that Vista and Browbeat had apprehended a duo of particularly idiotic muggers. Which she had missed, though it didn't matter because they were only now asking her to call it in.
She should have been out there… which reminded her that she had plans for Sunday, and mandatory on-base time she needed to have rescheduled. Which meant talking to Weaver.
"God damn it," she muttered as she sent the pre-programmed alert to the Brockton Bay police. Two muggers, apprehended, Ward involvement, no complications, no medical issues, absolutely no desire to talk to Weaver…
Vista and Browbeat sat down on the curb to wait for the police pickup, and Shadow Stalker was officially done with the lethargic, intolerable day she was enduring. She stood, phased through the back of her chair, and decided that if she was going to go talk to Weaver, she was at least going to try and startle the bug bitch.
Weaver's office was two walls and a doorway away from the Wards common room, and while said walls had wires, Sophia's visor told her the only sources of electricity were widely-spaced. Not for her convenience, nobody could be bothered to go through the walls to make things easy for her, just by chance. Which meant it was the work of a moment to cross the hall and float into Weaver's office.
Said office was empty, save for a desk, a filing cabinet with a lock, and a long shelf lined with terrariums. The bugs within were going about what to Sophia looked like their normal, non-Weaver daily lives, meaning Weaver was already out of range somehow. She could move fast when she wanted to.
Snooping in Weaver's office wasn't what she had come for, and part of her knew that if she was caught, she'd be slapped with even more minor punishments and lectures, but she stayed anyway. Digging around in Weaver's stuff was at least something to do.
There was a pile of the usual Ward-related paperwork on one corner of her desk, but other than that it was clean. No picture frames, no pencils or pens, just a plain oak slab with many little black marks from bugs messing with ink.
The filing cabinet, on the other hand… Sophia glanced over at the terrariums again, and upon seeing their inhabitants still acting normally, phased her hand into the cabinet. Grabbing things while phased was always a crapshoot, since she could barely feel anything, but she managed it on the first try, claiming a few drab folders.
The folders had titles printed across the front in the sort of stereotypical wide lettering movies had led Sophia to expect would say 'Confidential' or 'Top Secret'. Instead, titles such as 'Discretionary Budget' and 'Disciplinary Procedures' greeted her extremely bored gaze. Boring, pointless, and probably just proprietary enough that she'd get in major trouble for having them. She phased them back into the filing cabinet and crouched to get something from further down the alphabet.
This time, she withdrew a single, extremely thin file. 'Personal Tax Documents', it was labeled. She almost put it back…
But taxes involved identities, names and addresses and maybe even special forms for Case 53s. It was a chance to one-up the bug bitch and find out what she was hiding behind that mask…
It was also illegal, but Sophia wasn't about to let that stop her. She glanced at the terrariums, confirmed that yes, the bugs were still milling about aimlessly, and opened the folder.
A phone rang loudly; she instinctively slapped the folder shut and chucked it into the filing cabinet before realizing that it was her own. Still, that had spooked her, and she didn't feel safe rooting around in her boss's personal life anymore. She phased her head through the door, checked that the coast was clear, and quickly returned to the console, with nobody the wiser.
Her phone buzzed once more as she sat down, and when she checked it she saw she had missed a call from Emma, and just now a text. Emma wanted to know if they were still on for tomorrow, investigating Hebert's whereabouts.
She sent back a quick confirmation, even though she hadn't gotten it sorted out with Weaver yet. At this point, if they didn't find anything on Taylor, she was going to spend that night hunting down thugs to pin to walls solely for the purpose of making herself feel better. Something about this particular day was making her want to claw at her own skin through sheer boredom.
Hebert's house was a sorry little thing, stuck in a crappy neighborhood and painfully average, but lacking even the semblance of effort put into it. Shutters were old and faded, the front step was broken, and the roof needed minor repairs.
"I can't… climb… like you…" Emma panted as Sophia hauled her by the arm up to a safe perch in the tree across the street. She was wearing what passed for clandestine clothing for her, brand-new sweatpants and an old hoodie with nail polish stains around the sleeves. She clutched a pair of binoculars and her phone, the former for surveillance and the latter for entertainment, or calling the police, whichever was necessary.
Sophia didn't expect to find anything, but she was raring to get going anyway. "Stay put, watch for any sign I've been seen," she instructed. She was feeling her lack of a crossbow, but this wasn't something she could do as Shadow Stalker. "You're sure her father won't be home until late?"
"He still works at the docks, I asked my dad," Emma confirmed. "He's always home late, and he works on Sundays ever since his wife died. Not like Taylor is worth making time for anyway. He's probably staying away from her."
"If she still lives here," Sophia reminded her as she descended. It was cloudy out, and the street was mostly abandoned, but she would feel more secure once she was checking out the house itself, not standing around on the other side of the street.
"Maybe she ran away," Emma theorized, lifting her binoculars to her face. "Go get her, predator."
Sophia casually crossed the street, then circled around the house to the Heberts' left like it was the most natural thing in the world. Once she was safely out of sight in the fenced-off bit of grass that passed for a backyard, she pulled her hood down and carefully passed through the fence.
There was nobody in the Heberts' backyard, and no sign that she had been seen. For all the activity she had seen on this street, she and Emma might be the only ones around, but it was good to be careful. There were lights on inside, shining out from the windows, but that didn't mean anything. Everyone kept their lights on when to do otherwise was to signal to anybody around that one's house was empty and ripe for robbery.
A shape moved in front of one of the lights in a window on the ground floor, and Sophia instinctively crouched, then phased back through the fence, opting instead to stand on her toes and look over. The window was visible, and within, if she squinted, a familiar tall and scrawny figure could be seen.
Minutes of observation, aided by the light silhouetting Taylor, cleared up what Sophia was seeing. Taylor was writing, or drawing, or something that required a pen and paper at a table. She had what looked like a laptop open on the table further back, the screen shining mostly white.
It looked like she was doing her homework, albeit with a laptop… But she hadn't come to school in weeks, and Emma had checked; she hadn't transferred anywhere, either. Whether or not she had officially dropped out, Sophia didn't know, but there was no way Winslow was going the extra mile to provide her with her schoolwork either way.
The laptop was suspicious, too; everything Sophia knew about the Heberts said they wouldn't be able to afford such a thing. They were barely scraping by as it was, and word from Emma was that they'd settled with the school in exchange for Taylor's hospital bills being covered, nothing more.
Sophia was considering returning to Emma with her information when she felt a pinch on her wrist. She shook her hand, but the single, red ant clung doggedly to her, undeterred.
A creeping dread rose over her, one she tried to shake off like she tried to shake off the ant; vehemently, and unsuccessfully. It could be a coincidence; Weaver wasn't everywhere, the odds of her even noticing any of this were miniscule.
Still, she quickly made her way around the house and back across the street.
Emma wasn't in her tree anymore. She was standing on the sidewalk, clutching her binoculars, facing a swarm of butterflies that still somehow managed to loom threateningly. Sophia knew there were other bugs within the depths of the butterfly cloud; that was Weaver's usual method of operation on the rare occasion she went out on patrol. But this was supposed to be her day off.
There was literally no point in trying to get away; if Weaver could see her here, then she would notice her fleeing and assemble a much less friendly bug swarm wherever she tried to go. Sophia trudged across the street to her friend, hoping all the way that Emma hadn't said anything incriminating.
"As I was saying," Weaver's swarm buzzed, hummed, and chirped, the voice entirely demonic without Armsmaster's filters to dampen it down, "stalking can be a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the situation. If you're going to do it, not sitting in a tree with binoculars in the middle of the day would be a good start, but it's smarter to just think of some other way to get your thrills. I suggest bird-watching, since you already have the equipment."
"Sorry," Emma blurted out, "we were just worried, Taylor has dropped out of school and there was talk of her doing drugs, but nobody's seen her in a while…" She let the insinuation trail off there. It was a passable attempt at seeming innocent, if clueless, but Shadow Stalker had been on the opposite side of such tall tales way too often to believe it would work. What was considered believable changed drastically when the person listening was a hero, and the one talking a potential criminal.
"It's still a crime, even if you think you'll catch a criminal," Weaver buzzed. "But I might let you off… Emma Barnes."
Emma blanched. "I didn't–"
"You didn't have to," Weaver's swarm said. The majority of the butterflies shifted, turning the 'face' of the blob to Sophia. "We'll talk later."
"You can't just do that!" Sophia hissed, hoping she had just caught Weaver making a mistake, for once. "She didn't know!" Weaver had just clearly implied they knew each other, that was the sort of thing that got heroes in serious trouble, it was a massive breach of all their precious rules about security.
"She's on record as being present at your initial probation hearing," Weaver droned, somehow making a thousand bugs sound wry. "Two months afterward, you explained to Armsmaster that she knows your civilian identity, in response to inquiries about a phone call he overheard, and what he considered lax security protocols. These things are logged, you know. Anyone in the Protectorate with a reason can access the files."
Sophia seethed inwardly, even as she nodded numbly. Armsmaster, of course he wrote all of that down somewhere, of course Weaver could get at it. Everyone above her was incompetent except where it mattered least, their all-important bureaucracy. If they put this much effort toward catching real criminals, Brockton Bay might not be a shithole. But no, here she was getting busted for stalking, of all things. If Dennis ever learned of this, he'd never let her live it down.
"I thought you were off today?" Dennis called out from his spot on the console as Sophia stalked in. There was an edge to his voice, and his position on the console made her think that he knew more than he let on about why she was here. If Weaver had come in on her off day and gone on a patrol by pure chance, Sophia was going to find a parahuman who could help her hunt down and kill her phenomenally shitty luck.
"Freeze a curtain rod and sit on it," she growled, slinging her backpack on the couch. She was fully outfitted, because for some reason Weaver had let her and Emma off with a warning, and of course the veiled promise of punishments to come. She had time to go home, think about how terrible this would be, and then make her way to the Rig.
"Ooh, like a witch's broom," Dennis said happily. "If I froze it, it would stay in the air… Thanks for the Halloween costume idea. Weaver and Armsmaster are waiting for you in her office."
Sophia trudged across the hall, even less enthusiastic about the upcoming confrontation now that Armsmaster was involved, and pushed open the door to Weaver's office.
There was a single chair in front of Weaver's desk, one that hadn't been there before. She was seated on the other side, looking for all the world like Principal Blackwell with a costume and an even bigger sense of self-importance, and Armsmaster was looming behind her.
She sat, mentally marshalling her defenses. She was helping her friend, she was worried for a civilian, she was keeping an eye on her unstable friend who was going through some things, she was acting to protect her school from a potential school shooter… If worst came to worst, she could imply she was checking on a potential trigger event and hope nobody looked into the event itself. This wasn't going to drag her down, not if she could talk her way out of it.
"Shadow Stalker," Weaver intoned. "This is a very complicated mess you've created."
That didn't give Sophia any hints into which of her excuses would work best, so she kept her mouth shut. She had seen dozens of perps incriminate themselves through talking too early; using that knowledge for herself was a bitter feeling, but she would do it anyway.
"Honestly," she continued, "did you really think I removed the surveillance cameras when I took this office? Or that I couldn't make my bugs act normal if I wanted them to?"
Sophia twitched, shifting into her breaker state for a split second before mastering herself and returning to normal. That was not what she had planned for. Weaver was supposed to bring up the Hebert thing, not the office incursion she had gotten away with.
"So there's that," Weaver continued. "You didn't actually go the last step and invade my privacy. Less of a secrecy rape, more of a groping and subsequent hollow apology."
"Weaver," Armsmaster warned.
"Sorry, I'm a little worked up and I've been told It's not healthy to push my emotions into the swarm when dealing with interpersonal issues," Weaver said casually. "I'm trying to be more expressive. Anyway… That was bad."
Sophia shifted in her seat. She wasn't nervous, she was just… apprehensive. Ready for a fight, even if there wasn't one to be had. She had been in tighter scrapes before. Though none that she couldn't shoot and phase her way out of.
"That was bad," Weaver repeated. "What you did next, though, was worse. Do you know why?"
Sophia stared blankly at her. She didn't know what Weaver wanted to hear.
But it seemed silence wasn't the answer Weaver wanted, either. "I'm going to need you to explain to me what you thought you were doing today," Weaver demanded.
"My friend was wondering what happened to a classmate of ours, and we went to go find out," Sophia said carefully. She knew Armsmaster had a lie detector in his helmet. "That's it."
"It wasn't at all related to breaking into Weaver's office?" Armsmaster demanded.
"No," Sophia said truthfully. "How could it be?"
"How could it be," Weaver repeated. She turned to look at Armsmaster. "Truth?"
"Truth," he confirmed.
"Well…" Weaver's butterflies, ever-present on her armor, were fidgeting, noticeably moving around more than normal. "That makes this even less clear-cut. I'm not sure what to do now."
"I'd suggest asking the obvious question," Armsmaster said dryly.
"I guess that's the thing to do," Weaver sighed. "Sophia. Do you know my identity?"
Sophia stared at the marked facemask, at the yellow lenses obscuring any hint at the one behind them. "I have no idea who you are," she said bluntly.
"Truth," Armsmaster declared.
"Not that it'll stay that way for long, once you've had a chance to actually think about all of this," Weaver buzzed. "So… I guess it's best to head this off at the pass and unmask now."
Sophia watched as one white-gloved hand went to the back of the ever-present helmet and pulled it up, forward and over by the hanging bit at the back, first detaching it from the rest of the armor and then removing it…
Black hair spilled out, and a far too familiar face followed.
"You know," Taylor Hebert said dryly, the buzz underlying her voice fading away completely as the last few cicadas on her neck stopped moving, "I'm honestly at a loss as to how I'm supposed to handle this, according to the rulebook."
"The regulations weren't designed for this level of ridiculousness and prior incompetence," Armsmaster offered, filling the silence as Sophia's mind struggled to catch up to what her clearly delusional eyes were reporting.
"I did come to the Protectorate hoping their uneven levels of oversight would work for me," Taylor mused. "And I have spent weeks trying to get things up to code… Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise."
"What…" Sophia swallowed compulsively. "What is this?"
"An unfortunate collision of civilian and professional lives where they were never intended to meet," Armsmaster sighed. "Weaver, I'm going to take you off duty while I sort through this mess."
"I expected nothing less," Taylor agreed.
"Shadow Stalker, go... " Armsmaster hesitated, then crossed his arms. "Regulation says Master-Stranger screening. You should be out in a few hours, we only need preliminary levels of thoroughness. After that, you're confined to the Rig until I get through this. You may go now."
Sophia rose automatically, not even thinking about it. Not even thinking about the complete contrast between Taylor Hebert and Weaver.
It came to mind that she might be going to juvie when all was said and done, that she might as well earn the punishment while she could. That Taylor Hebert was a pushover, a doormat waiting to be stamped on.
Taylor slipped Weaver's mask back on, the cicadas on her throat the last thing to disappear behind the family-friendly exterior, and Shadow Stalker tensed.
"For what it's worth," Weaver said with the same buzz in her voice as always, "I didn't plan any of this. It just happened this way. But I'm not that bothered by the system fucking you over, for once."
Shadow Stalker heeded the little voice in the back of her head, the other one, and walked out without a word. She knew she had lost. Somehow.
It didn't feel like Taylor had won, though. If Sophia was entirely honest with herself, it felt like she had done this to herself, and Weaver was just the one to notice it happening. Taylor, who was Weaver but wasn't in every way, was just a bystander.
Or so it felt. Maybe some time to sit around and do absolutely nothing was what she needed. Maybe she was under some Master effect, and her worldview was perfectly intact underneath.
She could only hope.
Sophia stumbled out of Weaver's office, a blank, dumbfounded look on her face. Armsmaster stood behind Weaver, his halberd at the ready.
She would have been worried about the implications of his position if she didn't know him. He was suspicious, but underneath it all… The halberd wasn't meant as a threat, he was just optimally prepared to use it if she went crazy. Just like he had been if Shadow Stalker had tried to attack or flee.
"Is she under any form of compulsion or suggestion?" Armsmaster asked.
"No," Weaver said simply, pushing any irritation at the accusation out to her bugs. She did rely on that particular facet of her abilities far too often, her therapist was right, but for right now she couldn't afford to mess up. She could work through the tangled mess of emotions this entire series of events elicited later, at home. Her dad would listen, though that promised to be its own awkward conversation, given his temper and how she wasn't planning to pin Sophia and the others down now that she had them…
"You harbor no ill-will toward the Protectorate or Shadow Stalker specifically?" Armsmaster asked.
"None toward the Protectorate," Taylor answered. "Sophia… I truly don't know. Nothing I've ever let get in the way of doing my job."
Armsmaster relaxed; any normal person would never see it, but she had long since worked out how to put bugs on his armor in the right places to sense the movement on the interior.
"I thought not," he said more warmly, moving to stand in front of her desk. "You've impressed me with your dedication and efficiency. I don't believe it was all an act."
"But you're still going to do a full investigation of all this," Taylor sighed. "And I'm probably fired, or demoted, or worse."
"That depends on certain details," Armsmaster said. "Truthful answers now would get you a lot of goodwill when that investigation happens."
"Such as?" Taylor asked. This was, strictly speaking, not how things should happen. Armsmaster should be sending her to the same Master-Stranger screening Sophia was going to have, and then confining her until he could fully investigate what was happening. Not ask questions in a semi-informal setting. She had read all the regulations, multiple times. Having the right bugs set up to read and turn pages meant she always had a book handy at work.
"Sophia claimed she and her friend were checking on a classmate, meaning someone around their age," Armsmaster said. He looked down at the chair, then presumably thought better of testing a flimsy fold-out metal contraption against hundreds of pounds of tinkertech armor. "Your records… They're not clear. I'm getting redirected to a subset of identity protection forms, but I was there for your entry interview and you never mentioned anything about witness protection…"
"Smoke, mirrors, and a good lawyer," Taylor explained. "Hypothetically, if one was not yet eighteen, but had a personal objection to being placed in another social environment with other teenagers, one might seek loopholes to get into the Protectorate. A sufficiently clever lawyer might have, upon hearing one's problem, sought out and discovered such a loophole."
"And this situation is completely hypothetical, because confirming otherwise would force me to close the loophole?" Armsmaster asked.
"Hypothetically, yes, but so long as you don't look too hard you won't find it," Taylor agreed. "It really only works if nobody has reason to really delve into the paperwork afterward. So, if someone did hypothetically pull it off, they did so by acting enough like an adult that nobody ever questioned it. And if the hypothetical father was totally on-board with all of this so long as his daughter's life improved…"
"Then nobody except maybe the Youth guard would ever have a reason to care that the rules were bent," Armsmaster concluded for her. "Assuming said rule-bender doesn't get into any legal trouble before they're actually an adult."
"That was my plan regardless of this hypothetical," Taylor confirmed. "I mean, what could possibly happen? I was thorough about knowing all the rules, I was doing great in my training, everything was going well…"
"And then Piggot and I came up with the plan to give the young, motivated, rule-oriented new recruit some extra responsibility, to free up more valuable veteran heroes full-time, while also giving the Wards more oversight." Armsmaster sighed and put a hand to his helmet. "That was our fault."
"You say fault, but…" She shrugged. "Once you brought the idea to me, I didn't exactly refuse." She had jumped at it, in fact. Being a part of teenage drama and stuck at the bottom of the totem pole was horrible, but getting put in charge and, if there was any drama, being in a position to stop it? Once she had seen what her new responsibilities would be, and how it mostly amounted to a camp counselor for parahumans with some extra authority, she had agreed.
"And at the time, you had no idea that any of the Wards would have known your civilian identity," Armsmaster supplied. "Is that correct?"
"I thought I'd not know any of them," she said firmly. Direct statements were better for Armsmaster's lie detector. He had told her as much on their joint patrols. He was easy to work with, once she had figured out what drove him. Credit didn't matter to her, so once she settled into her partially PR-mandated style of combat, they went well together. She could play the support role.
"Why not?" Armsmaster pressed.
"Circumstance, statistics… optimism?" She suggested. "Everyone knows the Wards go to Arcadia, and the rumors about Shadow Stalker going to Winslow were never proven. There were only six or seven Wards, out of thousands of teenagers in the city, and the number of teenagers who know me is almost as small. I thought I wouldn't know them, and I even made an effort to have them refrain from unmasking to me."
"When did you find out who Shadow Stalker was?" Armsmaster asked. Taylor had a feeling that this particular interview might find its way into the records as an official encounter if she approved once they were done.
"Two weeks in, when she walked into my office without her mask and complained about the console duty I assigned her after she flipped off a civilian in the middle of her patrol," Taylor promptly answered. That had been… less of a shock than it should have been, really. After two weeks of trying to bring the Wards of Brockton Bay up to snuff when compared to the rest of the country, she had been given ample opportunity to notice the similarity in personalities and brutality. It was more of an unpleasant confirmation than a revelation. Not that she would tell Armsmaster so unless he asked. There was being truthful, and then there was digging herself a deeper hole for no reason.
"I do recall that incident report," Armsmaster confirmed. "And this knowledge didn't change how you interacted with Shadow Stalker going forward?"
"It did, in one way," Taylor freely admitted. "It gave me a lot more context to work with. I shuffled a few of the Ward training modules around to prioritize the adequate force, public image, and professional behavior courses. Other than that, I did my best to treat her as Shadow Stalker, no more and no less. But she was not… easy… to work with anyway. I guess it could look like I was trying to aggravate her, but I really wasn't. She just wasn't getting with the program like everyone else was."
"I'm glad to hear that," Armsmaster said. "Aside from this, you've been an exemplary member of the Protectorate, especially in your zeal for the lesser-appreciated aspects of the job."
"My power lets me multitask," she said wryly. "If I wanted to, I could be rereading every PRT manual in the building right now, while also talking to you. I'm not, of course, but it does make things go a lot faster."
"Be that as it may," Armsmaster said stiffly. Taylor thought she detected a hint of envy in how thoroughly he refused to acknowledge that little skill. "What was your perception of the events of yesterday and today?"
"Yesterday and today… I didn't see yesterday's events," she admitted. "Sophia broke into my secure file cabinet, but I only noticed when I went to get her file and saw another shoved into a place it wasn't supposed to be, and checked the footage." Her little bluff about her insects was totally true, but it hadn't applied there, whatever she might have implied. "Today…"
She shrugged. "I was home, catching up on my schooling." Part of her cover story for joining the all-adult Protectorate at age sixteen had included implying that she was homeschooled and slightly behind on earning the general education diploma. Also that she was applying for college in the fall; she had never implied she was anything more than a day over eighteen years old, after all. The latter implication might even end up being true, given the prodigious rate she was tearing through textbooks with her powers and absolutely no sabotage from fellow students.
"You had a day off, and Shadow Stalker had previously arranged to reschedule her duties for the day," Armsmaster supplied.
"Yes." Her dad had been at work, she had been at the kitchen table, alone in the house… "I was watching the neighborhood, of course. The lawns and roads, specifically. You can never be too careful." She was also watching inside peoples' houses, but that didn't need to go on the record.
"As this incident may well demonstrate," Armsmaster agreed.
"I noticed two people climbing in a tree, and I definitely noticed when a ladybug I'd put on one of them felt Shadow Stalker phasing," Taylor recalled. "That has a distinct feel, the ground disappearing and being replaced by a thick, unique sort of gas with its own wind, so I knew it was her right away. From there, I continued to monitor her and her friend while working at the table. Once I was sure they were just there to invade my privacy, I formed a few swarm clones and confronted the civilian, and then Shadow Stalker. From there, I came to the Rig, went for her file to make sure I knew everything that was available to me, and found the misplaced file that led me to further evidence she was intruding on my privacy. Then I brought it all to you, and you know the rest."
"I do." He tilted his head slightly, pointing the little hidden camera directly at her. "For the record, what are your intentions regarding the fallout from these events? What would you like to see happen, and what do you expect to happen?"
"I really don't know," Taylor admitted. "I'm pushing off maybe two thirds of my emotions right now, and that makes it easier to think clearly… But it doesn't make any of this simple. I guess since it's all in the open, I'd want an investigation into my past in relation to Shadow Stalker, and her actions. I avoided going to interrogate Sophia's social worker or anything like that, because it would make me look like I was pursuing a vendetta… Somebody else can do that in my place, now. Whatever comes of that, comes."
She didn't care. It had only been a few months, but she didn't care. Getting this job, flinging herself headlong into adulthood, in a sense, though she had begun only pretending, learning to force her emotions out into her swarm to better impersonate someone who wasn't a moody teenager… Working with Sophia without giving herself away, even to Gallant, earning some method of hatred-infused respect from her… Seeing Emma so pathetic, caught up a tree spying on a past friend, cowering before a superhero who took the time to lecture her and suggest she change her ways…
Working as a hero. Taking pictures with fans, reading the discussion pages dedicated to her cape persona and smiling at all the misinformation about her powers. Forming friendships with Battery and Velocity and Armsmaster of all people, real friendships though it was early yet. Stopping crimes, doing it with the backing of a whole organization. Mending the bridge between herself and her father one late night spent talking at a time, the ice broken by her new job and how little she felt she had to keep from him now.
"I came here with the hope that avoiding more immature drama would make my life better," she finally said, composing her thoughts into something more or less coherent. "It did. Immeasurably. I like my job, I love being a hero, I enjoy helping the Wards. Less so disciplining them, but I can do it, and if I wasn't the one in charge, I think I'd worry about the person who was. After me, I mean, not my predecessor." She had the butterflies crowded on her mask shift to give the impression of a smile.
"So if it comes down to it?" She shook her head. "Whatever happens to Sophia and Emma, I'll abide by it so long as it's done by the book. I care more about keeping my position here, keeping what I've got. I'm done with them."
"If Sophia was cleared of any major wrongdoing and remained in the Wards?" Armsmaster asked.
"Then I'd keep trying to mold her into a hero who won't be a constant headache for her coworkers," Taylor replied. "But that doesn't seem likely to be my responsibility, now that our past is known."
Armsmaster reached up and tapped his helmet, then pulled it off with a mechanical hiss. "Done recording. Want to skip the official debriefing and use that footage?"
"Thought you'd never ask," she said, removing her own helmet in turn. "Yes."
"For what it's worth," he said, looking her in the eye, "I'm going to try and keep both you and Sophia right where you are. If you weren't where you are now, I'd push for her to suffer the consequences of her actions directly…"
"But if I'm willing to try and fix her, that's the more efficient option?" she asked with a wry smile. She didn't feel much of anything; her bugs were taking the brunt of her feelings, as the frantic deathmatch occurring in one of her bulk bug terrariums could attest to.
"No, I think it would be better for both of you, regardless of efficiency," he said seriously. "You're moving on, moving past what she did… Maybe she can too. Or maybe not, but I'd rather keep you where you are. I'll try and push things that way."
"Well, the Protectorate's inconsistent oversight had to work for me one day, after helping screw me so thoroughly past," she mused. "Thanks."
"It's the least I can do for a coworker," he said, leaning over to shake her hand. "I'll keep it all hushed up under identity protection, but you're going to get a lot of questions once the investigation reaches a conclusion."
"I can handle that." She returned her helmet to its rightful place atop her head and resumed using her cicadas to augment her voice. "Weaver is the perfect, mature adult."
Her sarcasm was rewarded with the rare sight of Armsmaster smiling.
Author's Note: This one-shot was inspired by a comment from Randommodder05 on Reddit, which reads as follows:
'I've always thought it would be a funny idea for Taylor to be able to fake being an adult (maybe just over 18-ish) due to her height.
Of course, she's the closest in age to the Wards, so she's put in charge of them, since clearly, she'd be down with the kids and know all about the facebooks and the instagrams.
Which means she learns that Shadow Stalker is Sophia Hess... by becoming her boss.'
I figured this would be easier to see from an uninformed point of view at first, and since Sophia is the only other person directly mentioned in the prompt, she got to be the one. Keeping it within suspension of disbelief, on the other hand, was much less simple. Getting her in believably would have been a lot easier with an alt-power tailored to make it simple. (A low Stranger subrating to make people see her as she wants them to, for instance, maybe a power based around perception with comparable levels of Queen-multitasking. Or maybe just a 'Not-My-Problem Effect' she can imbue objects with, strategically applied to the ink from her pen when she writes certain things down in the paperwork…) But as it is, with the canon powerset, it's a combination of vagueness, semi-probable explanations, and leaving things up to the imagination
But in all of that, trying to make it believable, it ended up not being humorous at all. It ended up being a (hopefully) believable, moderate interpretation of Sophia, and a totally different evolution of Taylor that was molded by the constant need to behave professionally in an environment that expected nothing less of her, but then also rewarded her dedication. Of Sophia coming to respect and hate Weaver in a way that was totally unrelated to her potential combat prowess, and entirely based on her behavior in the 'office' setting, though it was mostly offscreen either way. There was no explosion of anger and homicidal rage from Sophia, no haughty victory speech from Taylor, it wasn't even a planned thing on either side… This one-shot ended up being messy and surprisingly calm, laser-focused on Taylor, Sophia, and not much else. There weren't even any fights. I'm not sure what happened or how well it'll be received, and little of it was in the spirit of what the original prompt asked for.
So, I did what any sane author would do… I committed to the specific path this story wanted to go down, wrote it from start to finish in under 48 hours, and then went on to write the crack-ridiculous version too! That'd be next chapter.
Now, a bit more housekeeping. In case anyone is wondering, this collection of Worm one-shots will update irregularly, because it's mostly a dumping ground for any Worm one-shot I might do in the future. I started jotting down inspirations for alt-powers and interesting stories using them, got up a small list of prompts I wanted to do eventually, and when I saw that list in its full glory, decided I'd better make a compilation, rather than spamming individual one-shots. These little stories will be written and posted approximately when I feel like it, no promises and no schedule. I also do not intend to extend or convert any of them into full stories in any capacity; my writing style does not lend itself to working that way. Any full Worm stories will begin life as full Worm stories, not here. (I have exactly one book-length Worm AU in the works, FYI, and again, there's no deadline on it so who knows when it'll be done. I never post anything until I've finished the story in question, so as to avoid ever abandoning anything halfway, so it might be a while).
So yeah. Read, enjoy, review if you'd like, maybe follow this collection if you want to be alerted when I put out something else. Don't demand continuations of any particular one-shot or spam me with prompts, please; the latter is acceptable in moderation, but I promise nothing when it comes to following up on suggestions. If you're a new fan here for Worm, feel free to check out my profile, but this is currently the only Worm thing I have written.