Taylor was in the computer classroom. She had finished her work pretty early and was browsing the PHO board for Brockton Bay. A few minutes into the message boards, in the advanced search page, looking for something of her description, she saw the message.

Subject: Bug

Owe you one. Would like to repay the favor. Meet?

Send a message,

Tt.

Mind furiously racking through the events of last night, she didn't think that it could've been sent by Tempest and Hurricane. One, they gave her the tinkertech keychain to use, two, it was them who saved her bacon that night. So it must be the elusive Undersiders. She quickly started searching about them, and came up with practically nothing. sure there were a few names of small time villains out there, but the group known as the Undersiders was little known in PHO. Their wiki page was almost non-existent. Just that they were petty thieves. She thought about it for a few minutes, decided to talk about it with her dad, and closed most of the pages.

She then searched for Tempest and Hurricane, and came up with nothing, as she expected. She then opened another advanced search page and searched about the description of their powers, and the chariot with the mechanical horses, to their costumes. They were obviously well made, and they were real ancient Greek style armor, all real metal, not some newer modification inspired by them like Dauntless of the Protectorate.

When searching about the chariots and the mechanical horses, she was surprised to see that there were five instances of hearing the sound of hooves and a rattle of something that sounded like a carriage moving fast reported at the same time that night. They were heard in five different parts of the city, meaning they were a large group. When laid in front of her like this, it wasn't hard to suspect that maybe these people were looking for her, but she waved that thought away as being overly paranoid. It still may be a coincidence, that the new group in town going out for the first time in the same night as her.

Soon the bell rang, she closed the tabs and cleared the history and went to the rest of her classes. She had to tolerate one more day, and she would be free of Winslow for good.

She couldn't believe that Emma would sink so low, as to ridicule her for the death of her mother. But she shouldn't be surprised, Emma had destroyed her mother's flute, knowing how much it would mean for her. It was really hard to hold the swarm back, lest she gave in and strip them of their flesh with her bugs. The pain of having to hold all that in herself brought tears to her eyes, and she pushed her way through the sycophants surrounding her and left towards the principals office to wait for her dad to come and withdraw her from the school. At least it would be the last time she had to see Blackwell too.

Her father came at noon, and after seeing her face and eyes, his face hardened and the anger was almost visible around him. They went into Blackwell's office, and after exchanging a few empty pleasantries and a lot of heated words after, she was free from Winslow.

"How are you feeling," her dad asked.

"I don't know, somewhat empty. I guess there was a really small and childish part of me that hoped that Emma would stop being this mean bitch and become my friend again, but after today, when she brought up mom's death," she shook her head at this, "Well, she's dead to me. I don't know her anymore." With that, even if there was a very small chance of Emma coming to her and beg her forgiveness, she would not notice her, because she was dead to her, and dead people can't speak, because they're dead. She knew she was running the phrase to the extreme, but this was an extreme act on Emma's part too.

On the way home Taylor said, "Dad, there was a message on PHO addressed to me." "What?" "Well, it seems one of the villians that I saved last night wanted to get in touch, for a meeting."

"How did she find you? you didn't even meet last night, and how would they know your username?"

"They just posted a message with the subject bug, and said that they owe me, and want to meet."

"I hate to say this, but how about you get in touch with those boys?" He almost cringed, "and ask them to have your back? I'd sleep easier at night knowing you at least have a team to have your back."

"I don't know, dad. I've just gotten out of the teenage drama. I don't know if I'm ready to go back into it just yet."

"Come on sweetheart just consider it. I know you don't want to go to the wards, they are in too much regulations and have to take orders from the PRT, but at least these ones are independent, and unlike New Wave, you don't have to give up your real identity. At least consider it for the sake of your old man's heart."

"Alright dad... I'll go and meet Tempest and Hurricane. If what I've heard is true, they're a big team. there's no guarantee that they'd want me on the team."

She had put on her costume and went to an abandoned part of the docks, and set her spiders to set trip wires to alert her of the arrival of Hurricane and his teammates. She set them up at the maximum of her range, being three blocks, then took out the trident keychain and removed the head from the handle.

On the way here, she had gathered a bigger swarm than last night and had hidden it in the shadows of the buildings surrounding the square that she was in. It wasn't long that several of her spiderwebs were severed from the direction of the PRT headquarters, that was south of here.

She hid herself in a shadowy corner, and suddenly a chariot with amazing decorations of ancient Greek heroes and monsters came into the square. It was being pulled by two bronze mechanical horses that had rubies for their eyes. They were panting like real horses, and were dragging their hooves on the ground. Hurricane had the reins again, And besides him was a girl in leather armor with some Greek symbol stitched on the front. she had golden blonde hair that was reaching her shoulders from under the helmet she wore that was showing a bit of her chin and her cold and hard grey eyes. They were constantly looking around, analyzing everything, and were rather intimidating to look at. Hurricane had two bright sea green eyes that were a bit friendlier than those of the blond.

Taylor started to move forward, and two sets of eyes snapped in her direction which made her freeze momentarily. She started moving again, and came into the light of the square.

"Hey kid! picked a name yet?" The girl besides him elbowed him, more shoving him with her elbow, and he said, "Oh! sorry, this is my beautiful companion Owls, who decided to come with me to meet you."

"Nice to meet you." the so-named Owls said.

"Good to meet you too. what's that mark on your chest, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I don't mind, and it's a Gorgoneion, and you can look it up and tell me what you find about it."

"So! Have you thought about joining us? we'd teach you how to fight better." Hurricane jumped right to the matter, and tried bribing her at the same time.

"I'll think about it. I used the keychain for something else. Someone named Tt had put up a post about me, saying that they wanted to meet me. I wanted to ask about your opinion, see if I should reply to them. Do you know any Tt?"

"No, it must be one of those Undersiders that Armsmaster was talking about. The asshole took the whole credit for the fight with Lung. Word is, his heart stopped in the hospital. That he went into shock from the tranquilizer that was in his bloodstream. Oh, and his dick fell off."

Taylor was grimacing and had ducked her head at the end, and when she looked up she could see that he was grinning at her.

"Hey it's on his head! Greedy bastard should've given credit where it was due. Nice touch by the way, when we show up and take credit for what we did, your name is gonna be remembered! 'The Girl who made Lung's dick fall off!' They'd become afraid of you real good. You used what you had in your arsenal and came out on top." His words were having an effect on her, as she had rised her head and was looking at him.

Owls was still studying her when Hurricane stopped talking. She said, "Come on, come with us to our base. We'd introduce youbto the others. then you can decide if you wanna join us or not."

After another exhilarating chariot ride, they reached the warehouse by the water front. Hurricane knocked a pattern on the door, and after a few seconds opened the door to find that there were 11 people standing there in full armor, each holding a weapon poited to the ground waiting for them. They were all athletic and fit, with hard muscle showing wherever the armor wasn't covering. They had all their focus on her, then one said, "You were right, Tempest, the costume does look intimidating in the dark. in the light too. even if it's incomplete." The one who spoke was a girl, with a pink plume on her helmet, and a pearl and a scallop shell stitched on her leather armor. She had her hair chopped unevenly, and still it looked good on her. She had beautiful kaleidoscope eyes, warm and inviting. Beside her was Tempest, this time holding a spear in his right hand, and having put his other hand around the girls shoulders. "This pretty girl here is Doves, my girlfriend."

"Nice to meet you, Doves."

"You said you made that yourself, huh? Looks nice enough. The armor panels are placed right, but the head piece is incomplete. What did you make it from?" This time it was a boy, He was on the short side, wore a kind of hardened cloth armor, and had a mad glint in his brown eyes when he looked at her costume, like there were a great multitude of ideas running through his brain. "Oh, sorry! I'm Mr. Smith! genius extraordinaire!"

Taylor looked at him a little, considering her response. "I made it from black widow dragline spider silk." she decided to be truthful. Everyone's eyes widened, and the so called Mr. Smith came forward, with a finger extended as if to touch her. He was dragged back in line by two boys in leather armor, both having a caduceus on their armor, and then said, "That is amazing! This baby is practically stab proof! And those armor panels! they can potentially stop a bullet! It's a beautiful work of art, that's what this is!" He then suddenly looked her right in the eyes, and said, "You're going to complete this, aren't you?" He was interrupted from saying anything more by a girl in an elaborate armor, with a purple cloak around her shoulders. "So you do have that exact control on your bugs. We can work with that." The intensity of her black eyes, hard as flint, made Taylor uncomfortable. Like she was a fresh recruit being judged by a general.

"Okay, we should introduce ourselves. You've met me, and Owls, and Tempest, and Doves, and Mr. Smith introduced himself, well, now meet Praetor, one of our most skilled fighters, and one of our strategists. Then we have Robin hood and Alladin, rose two who stopped Mr. Smith, then we have dear Sickles, she can manipulate plants, and we have Ghost King and Doctor Sunny, the couple over there, and last but certainly not least, we have Bellum and his girlfriend Jeweler. So, have you chosen a name?"

Taylor shook her head, and Hurricane said, "Well, maybe we can help you. I mean, what are your powers? what do you like? something along those lines."

"Well, I control bugs. I mean, not only bugs, because I've found a few worms and I can control them too, and a few crabs, but mostly bugs. And I thought about Weaver, but it doesn't feel right, and there were Queen, and Skitter, but most of the names that I come up with are either too wimpy or too villianny."

They all studied her for a minute, and Owls said, "Have you thought about another theme, like, maybe an Egyptian theme. You can complete the headpiece, and use a Nemet, an Egyptian style headdress, and then we can go on from there. Have you thought about Khepri?"

"Huh. Not a bad name. Who's that?"

"It's the Egyptian god of scarab. He's one of the sun gods."

"Isn't it a little pretentious? calling myself after a diety?"

"Don't worry. We'd train you up to a point that you can call yourself that and you can pull it off too. Beat up a couple supervillains and noone would question your name." Hurricane told her.

"Hey I haven't even decided to join your group."

"Oh come now kid, you know you wanna join us! Think of all the fun we're gonna have together! It's gonna be awesome!!!"

(It wasn't. It was five months of pure hell for Taylor. After Two months of endless trouble, and three months of gruelling training, she was ready to beat Hurricane up.)

"Alright, we'll see. But what about the message from Tt?"

"You have a phone on you?" Owls said. When Taylor said no, She gave her a smartphone and told her to use it to message them.

Annabeth and Reyna were following the girl with the bug powers. They had digged around about her, and found out that her name was Taylor Hebert. She was the daughter of a single parent, having lost her mother to a car accident two years ago. She was mercilessly bullied by her once best friend from the start of her highschool, and was finally given a seed of power on the first day of school after the Christmas holidays. She had spent three months training with her power, and making a costume that resembles a bug. Annabeth didn't like the costume, the face mask reminded her of Arachne. But she could control her dislike to get to know the girl. She was smart, could pick up concepts quickly and had a sharp mind. Her awkwardness was understandable, being virtually friendless for two years in her development phase would do that to anyone, and it was a show of her strength of will that she hadn't committed suicide. All in all, training her would be pretty easy, as she was eager and willing to take instructions. As she had recently pulled out of school, she would be free to come to the base and train with them. It was just a matter of time to get her to join them, if that vulpine faced little shit that was speaking with her didn't steal her first.

It was a day after they took Taylor to the base. The girl talking to her was blonde, had green eyes, freckles splashed on her nose, and a smug damned grin that was like a stab to the soul. She looked at Reyna and said, "If I ever use a grin that smug, just stab me."

Reyna smirked and nodded, and they returned to watching the two girls. It was obvious that they both knew they were there, the blonde girl becoming smugger, if that was even possible, and Taylor didn't show any outward sign. The girl passed her a lunchbox, said something to her, and then left. Taylor looked at them, raised an eyebrow, and Annabeth waved at her with a fake smile.

Taylor went home, and they left the boardwalk and picked their pace to head to the warehouse. They had to walk through the docks, and it being ABB territory, they had to be careful. they were unarmed, but as it would take only a thought for their weapons to materialized on their bodies, they just had to be careful to don't do that in front of witnesses, and tried to not fall in a situation to need to do just that. there were a klick from the base, and had gone through an alleyway to shorten the road, when ten gangsters in ABB color rushed in from the front and behind them. They were armed with knives mostly, three pipes and one even had a katana.

The one with the katana came forward, and in accented English said, "Two pretty girls coming into our territory. How about we have a little fun, and then take them to the farm?" He had a lecherous look on his face that was echoed on the others' faces. Reyna gave them an unimpressed look, and said, "Why don't you little punks get out of here, and we'd pretend you didn't say what you said." a few of them laughed at her bravado, and suddenly the leader gave a signal, and they started to come forward to do what they wanted. The first one reached Annabeth, and waved his knife in front of her face. She took the hand holding the knife, twisted it behind his back, took the knife and slammed the hilt on the top of his head, making him crumble down in pain. by that point, Reyna had taken a pipe for herself, and was laying into the thugs with a bored expression on her face. three of the ten were now down for the count, and then some of the ones behind Annabeth came to get her from the back. She dropped down and swiped her leg at his feet, making him fall down, and then kicked him in the face to properly incapacitate him. Reyna had beaten up the other one with the pipe, and now that they were half of what they started with, they were a little scared. But their stupidity won, and the four with the knives attacked them, the leader staying behind. They made quick work of them, Reyna just using two blows altogether, and Annabeth just a bit longer. The leader had turned to run, but Reyna threw the pipe in her hands at his legs, tripping him. They went to stand above him, and each gave him a swift kick to the nuts, and Annabeth gave him a cut on his face. Then she told him,

"You're lucky we're in a good mood punk. Next time we'll kill you and be done with it."

When they turned to leave, they noticed a shadow looking at them from the roof of a building. It was trying to be sneaky, but to the two veterans of war, it was obvious. They didn't show that they'd noticed it, and continued to the warehouse. They took a few detours to lose it, and when they lost the tail, the went back to tell the others of the new development.