Chapter 11: Trigger Rat

By the time I got home, it was safe to say that I was pretty tired. You could even have called me dead tired, if it hadn't been for the fact that I was, you know, not actually dead.

Which may be why I missed the fact that Emma was camped out on my doorstep.

Well, I missed it at first. I definitely noticed when she launched herself off the porch at me.

I kind of had to. She bowled me over completely and knocked me to the ground, and then she wouldn't let go. Every time I tried to wiggle free, she just hugged me tighter, sobbing piteously all the while.

By the time I finally managed to get us up, and inside the house, I had to admit to being more than a little curious as to what had gotten her so worked up. And, perhaps just as importantly, what had brought her here to get worked up about it.

"Hi, honey," Dad said, as I opened the door. "Did you deal with...everything...huh."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry about this. I seem to have acquired a limpet."

"So I see. And a particularly soggy one, at that. I don't suppose you have any plans for removing it?"

I had to wince, at that, because hearing Dad's question just caused Emma to hug me even tighter.

"No," I said carefully. "I think she might break something if I tried. Ems? Does...do your parents know you're here?"

Emma didn't say anything—she hadn't said anything since I got home, except for repeating "I'm sorry" over and over again—but she did shake her head.

I sighed.

"I guess we'd better call them," I said, my tone resigned.

As it turned out, I didn't just miss the fact that Emma was camped out on our doorstep. Fair's fair, Dad missed that, too.

I also missed the fact that I was still in costume.

Thankfully, it was dark, and there aren't a lot of street lights in our neighborhood, so I don't think anybody saw me. And I didn't have my mask on, and I was still wearing a jacket over said costume, so all they would have seen was the bottom half of my costume, anyway. Which still looked weird, but it wouldn't have been the weirdest thing people in our neighborhood wore at night.

Emma, though...Emma was another matter.

"Taylor," she asked me, as she stroked the fabric of my costume against her cheek, "why are you in a...a costume, I guess? And why were you wearing a mask, when you came in?"

I sighed, and slumped a little.

It had taken Emma couple of hours to get all the tears out of her system, and there were a few times where I thought she'd pass out, either from dehydration, or just from sheer exhaustion. She'd certainly managed to thoroughly soak my jacket, which was now in the laundry to get clean and dry. But somehow, she didn't seem to need to stop. It was almost enough to make me wonder if she'd Triggered, somehow, while she was under the spider's sway, but, of course, that doesn't happen in real life. Er...you know what I mean. Nobody triggers with the super-power to keep crying forever, is what I mean.

And clearly Emma hadn't, either, because eventually she ran down, and released most of me from her grip. Which was good, because I still had homework to finish. She wasn't willing to release me all the way, though, and even now, she was still holding tightly on to my arm, like if she let go of me, I might escape, and she might never see me again.

To be fair, that wasn't outside the realm of possibility. I still hadn't decided how I felt about things. On the one hand, a lot of what Emma said had really, really hurt. On the other hand...well, she had been under somebody else's control. And clearly, it had been wearing on her.

And on the other other hand, she'd made friends with Sophia. Which...uh...I wasn't really sure what to think about that.

"I triggered," I finally told her, turning to look her in the eye. Well, more like, turning to look at the top of her head.

When did Emma get so short?

She went still, all of the sudden, and then she squirmed, so that she was looking up at me.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "It wasn't supposed...you were supposed to tell someone."

"I did," I pointed out, but she shook her head.

"Not the school," she said, avoiding my eyes. "Somebody who'd know. Your dad. My parents. Somebody."

I sighed, then.

"And what would that have done?" I asked her, gently, and she went still.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "It was just...it was all I could think of."

"All you could think of?!" I almost shouted, my voice incredulous. "Turning the last year and a half into an absolute nightmare for me was all you could think of?!"

"I'm sorry!" she yelped, diving under my arm like she was trying to hide behind it. "I'm sorry, but...I'm not as smart as you are, Taylor! And when...when...oh God..."

She started sniffling, as if she was about to burst into tears again, and I sighed, and rolled my eyes.

"Did this have anything to do with that spider in your hair?" I asked her.

She went still, and peeked out from under my arm at me. Apparently seeing what she wanted to see, she sat up, suddenly, and mostly let go of my arm.

"That was you?!" she said, her voice almost giddy. "You're the one who killed it!"

I stuck one hand out, and waggled it a bit.

"Sort of," I said. "It was...well..."

Then I sighed, and reached out with my power towards the mouse who was apparently still snuggled down in her jacket. With a start, the mouse woke up, and I sighed, as I realized that it hadn't eaten all day.

"Come on," I said, standing up, and pulling her after me. "I'll show you. Then you can tell me all about it."

"So that was real?" she said, a few minutes later, as she watched the tiny orange-clad mouse chewing industriously at a grape. "I didn't just...make that up?"

I shook my head, and put my hand down, picking up another mouse who'd come running to my call.

"They're real," I said. "That's my power."

"You control mice?!" she said, siting bolt upright, and spinning around to look at me.

I waggled my free hand again.

"Sort of," I said. "I mean, it's like total control, I guess, when I'm using it. And I can give them instructions. But...they get smarter, the more I work with them. And sometimes, they start coming up with some really weird stuff."

"What do you mean, weird?"

"Well, they start picking out names, and dressing up in costumes, and stuff."

"Costumes?"

I gave her a flat look.

"You don't really think that mice wear orange jump suits in nature, do you?" I asked her, gesturing towards the mouse that had killed the spider that had been ruling over her. "Because no, they don't. Not normally."

"Huh," she said. "I never knew that."

I gave her an exasperated look.

"Hey, they might just be wearing them when we're not looking!" she said defensively. "I'm not an expert in mouse society!"

Great.

"Then let me confirm that no, they don't wear that kind of thing even then. I don't know where they're getting their costumes, or why they pick the ones they do."

"Well, this one's kind of obvious," Emma said, gesturing towards her savior. "You sent him to spy on me, right? And then to kill the spider that was threatening me?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "I can sort of see through their eyes, and stuff, so it seemed the logical way to do it."

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? As a spy and assassin, that makes him a ninja!"

And just like that, my train of thought came to a screeching halt.

After a few seconds, I closed my mouth, and shook my head.

"What kind of a ninja wears hunter orange?" I asked, my voice incredulous. "And why in the hell would that be the logical

conclusion for you to come to?"

"Because that's what they wear in the cartoon," she said, as if that explained everything.

"What cartoon?" I asked her.

I soon regretted it.

Apparently, Emma had been lonely the last year and nine months. Sophia couldn't always be there, after all. Not like I had been. And she'd reacted really poorly to the one time Emma had suggested they spend the weekend together at her house. Apparently, Sophia's home had been in a really bad neighborhood, even for Brockton Bay. So Emma had spent a lot of her time, being lonely.

Really, really lonely.

I hadn't realized it, really, but Emma and I hadn't just been inseparable. We'd been...well, inseparable. Almost literally. Wherever you saw one of us, the other wasn't far behind. And she hadn't really had that many friends who would tolerate her being that...clingy. I mean, yeah, okay, I'd been pretty clingy, too, but I hadn't realized that at least half of it was Emma.

She'd been so lonely, she'd started watching TV for company. And then, when the shows on local TV hadn't cut it, she'd started looking for other things to watch.

And she hadn't just confined herself to the stuff from our dimension. She'd watched the stuff from Earth Aleph, as well. Including one of the really popular anime shows that had come from that other world. Just the one, mind you. She'd decided that the others were stupid. But she'd apparently liked the one. Which was...kind of bizarre.

The show she'd decided she liked was about a loud ninja in orange. Because loud ninjas are a thing, I guess. Go figure. Personally, I think it's stupid. But she'd been drawn to the show by...something...and she'd stuck around, and kept watching it. Something in it had resonated with her, I guess. Honestly, I'm not sure what, but then again, I haven't seen it. I had a feeling we'd be rectifying that in the future, though, based on some of the names she was throwing around, and how enthusiastic she was about describing the characters. Names like Rock Lee and Might Guy had come up, along with more Japanese-sounding names like Kakashi and Sakura. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it, but, hey, it was something to watch. We'd gone through Dad's old shows, after all, and the great truism of American television is that there's never anything good on, unless you're looking for documentaries.

I wasn't sure what to make of all this, to be honest.

Eventually, though, we turned the conversation back to Emma. Or, more specifically, what had happened to make her be a raging bitch for so long.

According to what she'd told me, it had started soon after I left for nature camp, when she and her dad had gotten caught by some ABB thugs, and she'd almost gotten raped and/or mutilated. Which, for a girl who'd been earning spending money by doing some amateur modeling, would have been...well, it would have been pretty awful.

Then Sophia showed up, and saved her.

Okay, I could understand why Sophia would become her friend, after that. I imagine I'd be feeling pretty charitable towards the person who'd saved my bacon after that, too.

Then, about two weeks later, she'd been sitting in her back yard, when a beautiful woman had showed up. She'd asked Emma if Emma wanted to be strong. Strong enough, she'd claimed, to avoid getting raped in the future. Strong enough to keep up with Sophia, whatever that meant. Strong enough to face the nightmares she was still having.

Apparently, Emma was feeling particularly fragile, because she'd said yes. And the woman had told Emma to meet her at the park where we used to play—I suspect she hadn't phrased it like that, but that's what Emma said—that night, after her parents had gone to bed.

And Emma had.

What she'd found...wasn't what she expected.

"It was a spider," she told me, her voice subdued. "This big, huge, terrifying spider. It had wrapped all the playgrounds and the trees with its web, and when I came up to it, it just...dropped in behind me. And then it spoke to me. Told me that it could help me be strong, if I could help do a favor for it.

"She said she needed a home. That her last home had gotten burned down in a cooking fire, and now she needed a new one. Someplace where nobody would care what she was doing. And she said that if I did that, if I could find a building that fit those requirements, than she'd help Sophia make me strong."

"So you found her a building by the docks," I said, when she paused. "And she put a spider in your hair, to advise you."

She nodded, not meeting my eyes.

"It wasn't too bad, at first," she said. "The spider was a bit harsher than I wanted to be, but I wanted to be strong, and that sounded strong, so I did it. And it didn't make me act like that with people I knew. Then it told me to hurt a girl. To take a knife, and cut her cheek, so that it would scar. Just because she was homeless, and she'd said hello. It told me nobody would care, and that if I did that, I'd know what it meant to be strong.

"I refused. I told it that I didn't want to be strong like that. We had a big fight about it, and the spider left. And then, that night, after I went to sleep, I woke up to find myself hanging upside down, tied up in silk. And right next to me, was the girl the spider wanted me to cut.

"The big spider was there. She told me that refusing wasn't allowed. That I'd made a bargain, and that she'd make me strong, whether I liked it or not. And that I'd do what she said, or she'd have to punish me. Then she showed me what was on the other girl."

"It was a golden spider, wasn't it?" I asked, starting to have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as Emma nodded.

"It bit her," Emma said. "And within minutes, she was screaming. It took...it took a long time. But that one bite...she died, Taylor. I mean, it took her a long time. But she died. And then the big spider told me that the next time I disobeyed, it would choose somebody close to me. And they'd wake up bound in silk, and that they'd pay the price for my weakness."

She shuddered, then, and I couldn't blame her.

"I can see where you wouldn't want to risk that," I said quietly, and she nodded gratefully at me.

"When you came back from camp," she went on, after a few moments of silence, "the spider said I had to cut off all contact with you. Said you were making me weak. Said I'd never be strong if you were still around. So I didn't...I didn't call you back. I ducked your calls. I...I didn't talk to you. And then you came around anyway. And he...it was threatening you. Saying it was going to kill you, if you were going to keep making me weak like that. So I tried...I tried to do the opposite. It wanted me to cut you off, but...I knew that Mom and Dad would listen to you, if you said something. But you didn't. You let me lie and lie and lie, and you didn't say anything, and I couldn't stop, because if I did, the spider was going to kill you. Or Mom, or Dad, or Julie...somebody. And I...and I...and..."

She stuttered to a halt, then, too overcome by emotion, and I leaned over, and grabbed her other hand with mine.

"The spider was a jorogumo," I told her. "Some kind of weird spider demon. Apparently, they have control over spiders. Including fire-breathing ones."

She blinked up at me, and I shrugged.

"I had to find out," I told her, quietly. "And when I did, I got some friends, and we killed it. Because nobody does that to my friends, and lives to tell about it."

She stared at me, for half a moment, and then she burst into tears all over again...and now I was going to have to eat dinner one-handed, wasn't I?

"You knew all along, didn't you?" were my first words to Ms. Liberty as she walked in the door.

She just stared at me, and raised one eyebrow. I sighed.

"About Emma, and the spider?"

She smiled. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

"I've suspected something of the sort since I met you," she said. "The story you told has a jorogumo's fingerprints all over it, of course. They're vicious like that—they love to turn friends against each other, especially when one of the friends is particularly beautiful. It was just the spider's bad luck that you Triggered, in addition to having magic, which meant that you could realistically go after her, even after only a very short amount of time. But the truth was that it could have been several things, or even a combination of factors at play. Up to and including conventional human manipulation. Of which I suspect there has been more than enough going around lately anyway."

"Why?" I asked, simply. She gave me another look.

"Why did you leave it in place?" I asked her. Now it was her turn to sigh, and she reached over, dragged one chair over, and sat down heavily.

"If I had told you that your friend's betrayal was due to her being...controlled, in some way, by something like a jorogumo, would you have believed me?" she asked me. "Or would you have had doubts as to how much of that was real, versus how much was faked?"

I opened my mouth to answer her, and then I stopped, and thought about it.

Emma's betrayal had stung. No, it had more than stung. For the past year and three quarters, it had been an open wound that had bled copiously with every word she spoke. Every time she said something, it seemed, I'd wanted to cry. If Ms. Liberty had told me what was happening...I would have believed her. For a time, anyway. Until Emma got angry, either with me, or with somebody else, and lost her temper. Then, I would have been left wondering which Emma was the real Emma, and why I got shown the one I saw. I might have forgiven her, after that. Or I might not. I didn't know. But it would have changed things. Changed them in ways I wasn't sure of. Possibly even driven us apart forever.

Come to think of it, I wasn't sure that wouldn't happen anyway. But now I knew, in a way that I hadn't really understood before, just how scared Emma had been, all this time. I wasn't sure it was enough to make up for the things she'd said to me. But I wasn't sure it wasn't, either. And, having lost my own mom, I wasn't sure I could criticize her for making the same decisions I probably would have made if it had been my dad being threatened.

"No," I finally said. "If you had just told me, I would have always wondered, deep down inside. Which Emma was the real Emma...was she a friend, or was she a monster? I probably always will, I think. So..."

I trailed off, not sure how to articulate what I felt, and just settled for shrugging.

"That's part of it," Ms. Liberty said. "Part of it is also that it was genuinely intended to be a punishment...or, at least, as much as I ever give out direct punishments, anyway. You will find that I dislike simply punishing apprentices who break my rules, or who try to risk themselves too early. My own teacher handled such things very poorly when I was your age, and on several occasions, that fact has almost gotten me killed. I much prefer to set them tasks, to demonstrate why they should follow the rules I've set, no matter how stupid my apprentices might think them. And part of it is that I have found that my own skills at instruction are somewhat...lacking. I'm afraid that I have problems translating other magicians' methodologies into something I can understand, and vice versa. I've found, over the years, that once the universal basics are mastered, that I have to put people in the right sorts of situations to get my lessons across, and then go over where they went wrong. In this case, the lesson was intended to help you get a feel for looking for magical and parahuman energies, but it doesn't seem to have had the results I was hoping for."

"Probably because magic wasn't the first thing I thought to use," I pointed out. "It isn't, normally. It's just that when I went out on patrol, it was the only heavy offensive option I had."

"Hm. Yes. Well, I will have to come up with a new exercise for that, I think. In the meantime, good work on your spells. Being able to resist that kind of swarm is not something that many sorcerers are capable of."

I thought about that for a moment. Then I gave her a suspicious look.

"I wasn't supposed to be able to solve this on my own, was I?" I asked her.

She shrugged.

"I was surprised that you did solve it so quickly, but not by much," she said. "I wasn't trying to set you a task that you couldn't complete on your own. It was more about making you learn something of the dangers of the waters you are starting to fish in. Hopefully in a semi-controlled manner, without your having to risk getting yourself or your friends too badly hurt. But your parahuman power and your magical power are interacting, and it's making both take on properties that aren't normal. Among other thigns, that's accelerating your growth as a potential hero, and pushing you to move faster towards becoming a hero. In your case, it's also changing your appearance to make you a more idealized version of yourself, and make you learn magic at an accelerated rate, likely due to the multi-tasking ability allowing you to contemplate several solutions at once. Likewise, the magic is causing your rats and mice to react in ways that they shouldn't normally."

"Such as growing smarter when I work with them?"

"And being able to help with your own magic, yes. I suspect, given enough time, that some of your rats may be able to develop enough intelligence to Trigger their own para...paramurine powers, I suppose. Which will likely get you a significant Trump rating, even without your magic coming into play."

I blinked, at that, as the memory hit me.

"Oh!" I said, as I realized what that meant. "Oh, that's right! I meant to ask him about that!"

Carefully, I reached out with my power, and touched on Squire Rattus's mind, calling him to me. In a moment, he was there, standing on his hind legs, and gazing attentively up at me. Notably, there was no trace of the tiny sword he'd been using last night, or of any sheath to carry it.

"Squire," I said, carefully, "what were you doing last night? With the sword, I mean?"

He thought about this, his whiskers scrunching in concentration, and then looked back up at me.

"Squeak!" he said. "Squeak squeak, squeak, squeak! Squeak-squeak!"

"What do you mean, you made it?" I asked him, suspiciously. "How the heck can you make a sword, that fast, in the short amount of time that we were there?"

"Squeak!" he said, firmly. "Squeak, squeak. Squeak-eak!"

My jaw hit the floor, and Ms. Liberty nodded thoughtfully.

"Elemental constructs," she said. "A variation of Brandish's power, it seems like. Tell me, can you assume the form of the elements you use? Or even just a sphere of non-differentiated elemental energy?"

Squire Rattus thought about this for a moment.

"Squeak squeak?" he asked, sounding doubtful, and I managed to close my mouth enough to shake my head.

"No," I said, "that probably wouldn't be safe without some kind of controlled environment."

"Squeak!" he said, firmly, and I found myself sighing.

"I'm going to have to go back to the PRT building, aren't I?" I asked, and he nodded gravely.

"Well," I said, reaching over, and making sure my phone was handy. "Remind me to do so, after this lesson."

"Take your friend with you," Ms. Liberty said. "I personally know of at least two instances where a person who was afflicted with demons Triggered as a direct result of their manipulations, and I haven't made a point of looking into such events, so I'm sure there are more. Your friend may have done so as well."

I winced, at that. I wasn't...I still wasn't sure I could really forgive Emma, for what she'd done. I knew she was sorry...well, I knew she said she was sorry, and she was convincing enough for me to believe her. But I also knew that she was a very convincing actress, and if she wanted to fool me, she probably could. She had before, after all.

If she'd Triggered, that would go a long way towards proving how awful her own ordeal had been. I know that makes me sound like a horrible person, but, honestly, that would make me feel better. Even while I have to feel bad that she went through something that horrible.

Does that make me a horrible person? I hope not. It's hard to be a hero if you're a horrible person.

After the lesson—we went over the theory of actually using magic-sensing abilities in the field—we had dinner, and then Dad had a suggestion, based on something the Dockworkers like to do to give their people an unofficial final test before they're allowed to claim to be a skilled worker, like an electrician, or a plumber.

So, Ms. Liberty begged off of dinner to make arrangements, and we had dinner by ourselves.

Author's Note:

I'm trying not to do this, because it's the kind of thing that seems to invite controversy, but I've seen enough complaints in the reviews that I felt it had to be done this once.

For all that Wildbow creates an excellent story, and creates full characterization of every aspect of his...characters, there is a lot of stuff that you can tell is being imagined, and is outside of his personal knowledge base. One of these is the bullying done to Taylor-while I have no doubt that Wildbow watched bullying, and and knows how it works from the outside, I don't think he's ever been in Taylor's shoes. There's just too much missing from the story for that to be the case.

I've been in Taylor's shoes. I've had friends suddenly, and without warning turn from being friends, to picking on me, and trying to bully me (I say "trying" because I've always been the biggest kid in the class, and somebody whose wrath is best left to slumber peacefully, and it takes a very special, and very stupid, kind of bully to try bullying a kid like that twice). And trust me: when that happened, I "knew" exactly what I'd done to cause the bullying to commence. In retrospect, mind you, I was completely wrong in that belief...but at that time of my life, I didn't know what I know now. So yes, I "knew" what I had done which had caused the bullying. Just like I also "knew" what the other kids' motivation for bullying me was. Taylor would, too. She'd be just as wrong as I was, because she couldn't see the fear behind the bullying...but she'd believe she knew what had happened, and when things had changed. Likewise, I also never did like or forgive the kid who seemed to have sparked the switch. I never went through enough agony for that dislike to become hatred, but I've seen it happen, in kids who were harassed a lot more than I was. At that level of misery and loathing, you don't try to be the better person. You don't care about being the better person. At the level of pain Taylor was undergoing in canon Worm, you just want the hurting to stop. And when it doesn't, you sink into hopelessness, and you tell yourself it's okay, and you just try to get on with your life without thinking about the bullying.

About the bullying, or the loneliness.

There is a LOT of emotion in Triggering. A great deal more than most people really grasp. Triggering is traumatic. And there are consequences to suffering from that kind of trauma. Consequences from the powerlessness, the pain, and the repeated low-grade trauma from the bullying. Taylor Hebert has gone through hell, and suddenly emerged with the ability to punish the people who put her there. Good person or not, there is no way her confrontation with, and unmasking of Shadow Stalker wasn't going to result in Shadow Stalker dead or badly wounded. The same goes for when Emma tries to go after her at Acadia, or a few other instances. There is too much trauma, too much pain trying to get out. There is too much pain, clawing at Taylor's guts. Emma and Sophia and Madison have created a monster, in Taylor, and I do not believe that monster is ever shown to exist in canon Worm. Nor will it be shown here, I am afraid.

I can't write that monster's revenge. I can't write what it will do to Emma or Sophia or even Madison when it finally gets out. While it's only shadows, I have felt shadows of that darkness that Taylor suffers from. And I can't go down that road. So, instead, we're going a different route, so that I can sleep at night. If you don't like this, tough. There will be no revenge fantasies here. We're going to find...another way, to express that anger.