by Louis IX
Context: So. After all these years, I read web fictions besides HP fanfictions. And I stumbled on the epic one called Worm. Once again, reading the fanfics spurred my muse, and here I am.
Summary: Like the Recycling Bins, this is where the worms end up after passing through my brain. Or, at least, where the Worm-related plot bunnies come to rest.
Global disclaimer: I don't own anything you might recognize, especially the Worm universe, which belongs to its excellent and prolific author, Wildbow. This story is written only for enjoyment. I don't get paid enough for it. I don't get paid AT ALL for it. Story pic credit goes to NeoWorm, on DeviantArt.
General warnings: Spoilers for the indicated universes, sporadic updates and unusual content. This story will include many Triggers, so consider yourself warned ahead – common ones are racism and rape, overly represented in Brockton Bay, and suicide of desperate people. This work is also based on a world of fiction where graphic gory details abound, up to and including character death. Hence the ratings. I intend to prefix each chapter with additional indications, as the need arises.
Intellectual property: Heh. Apparently, that exists. Well, you are thereby authorised to take any single (or multiple) part of this assembly of words as inspiration for your own works of literary art. Tell me if you do, please, so I can savour the excellence I aspired to… without success.
A Can of WormsThe overhead lightning is poor, and the air smells stale. The corridor plunges into darkness ahead of you, with a slight tilt towards the right and downwards. There are doors on the left side, with numbers on them. On the opposite side, a notice board is glued to the decrepit plaster. The first you can see, numbered one in a manner both obvious and obnoxious, has a strip of paper pinned to the board. On it, you can read the following:
Emma inherited enough to make a bid for predatorhood, Sophia-style, in order to crush the worm that was her first friend, now her nemesis. Or try to.
Behind you, the door opens suddenly, and the air current, caused by the void beyond it, pulls you inside. You fall down towards a pinprick of light, which steadily increase in size to become the view of a hospital corridor, only to stop without damage when you find yourself in the scene itself.
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To Awaken"Where am I?" the gangly teenager asked from her place in the rolling hospital bed – one with leather bindings holding her down. "Who are you? What are you doing?"
The man pushing the rolling sleeping implement scowled, his ungainly face becoming even uglier in the process. But he didn't answer. Soon, the girl was pushed in what looked like an operation theatre, with overhead lighting blinding her.
A woman in a doctor's blouse came into her field of vision. "Hello, Taylor." she said.
Taylor tried to move her head to follow the woman's moves and actions, but it was futile. She repeated her earlier questions. And got answers. But not the one she wanted.
"You are in a facility where people are granted parahuman powers." the doctor said. "Someone generously paid for you to get one, in exchange for a few favours."
"What? But…"
"Now, I understand that it might come as a shock. I mean, being offered powers!"
"I'm not… I don't…"
"We know that you could have Triggered several times already, because of the horrifying accidents you have had, and the intense psychological damage you already have. However, when Panacea came to heal you after your Locker incident, she confirmed that you lack the Corona Pollentia, the brain structure that is necessary to actually get parahuman powers. The only other mean is through us."
"How-"
"No matter, now." the Doctor continued. "Because your sponsor paid for you to gain one without that pesky limitation… in exchange for others."
"Others?"
"Other limitations, yes. You have been chosen for the Nemesis program. Someone came with a bit of money to buy a parahuman power for themselves… and when learning of the existence of the program, they chose you to become their Nemesis: the one they will oppose the most in the field."
"But I don't want that!"
"Silly me." the Doctor said, her smile audible. "We don't care about consent, here. Especially as, as your sponsor, she will have control over when and where you meet."
"She… it's Emma, right? Her parents died, leaving her with much money, and she has always been on my case. And I'm sure she won't fight fair, too. Did she choose my power, too? What is it going to be?"
"I… couldn't say." the Doctor mumbled, and it didn't take a genius to learn that it was a lie. "Now don't move. Normally, we use vials, but some Nemesis have rejected the drink before, leading to… mishaps. And we don't want that."
As she felt the needle pressing, breaking, then entering her skin, Taylor tried to scream, to shake herself free, to escape the inescapable situation. But she was held too securely. And, as she fell unconscious, Taylor could vaguely hear an unpleasant male voice saying that they liked the part that followed.
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To RealizeTaylor awoke to a scream. A male scream, from a voice she recognized as her father's. The previous evening was hazy, in her memories, but she felt a sting on the side of her neck and tried to reach it… without success. As if her arm was unresponsive. Surprised, she looked down at herself.
And she screamed too.
Her dad had come to wake her up, as he did when she wouldn't get up in time for school – something that had been often the case recently. And upon pulling at the bedspreads, he had screamed.
Because she wasn't human anymore. She wasn't vertebrate anymore.
She was a worm. The only part coming from her earlier self was her face.
The screaming was interrupted by a figure crashing through the window. A dashing, flying, super-powered human teenage girl, and for a brief moment, Taylor entertained the thought of having Glory Girl in her home.
A red-haired Glory Girl, though, who was presently smirking at her with a face she knew too well.
"Emma!" she yelled – although, lacking the organs she was used to, she was limited in the volume. "What have you done to me?"
"What do you mean?" the girl asked, and only Taylor's honed senses detected the lie and underlying smugness in the tone.
"Why, Emma, why?"
"There's no Emma, here." the heroic character said, before striking a proud pose. "I'm Gemma Queen!" Taylor imagined (rightly) that she had chosen her name herself. The worm-like girl also noticed that her nemesis was actually floating on a crystal shard, and had other crystals around her costume and in her hands – probably to act as weapons. "I heard screams, detected parahuman activity, and entered, only to see a villain." Emma was still talking. "Come out, worm! Come out, I say, and fight me!"
She flew away, then, and Taylor felt herself compelled to obey. She had no memory of the previous night, and realized that she had her mind tampered with, on top of her body. "Dad?" she asked, just as she was slithering out of bed, towards the hole in the wall. "I don't understand, but…"
Her dad was out, though, and it was then that she remembered the man's aversion for everything that was insect-related. And that Emma knew about it, too.
In fact, the more she thought about the situation, the more she could reconstruct what had happened. And why Emma was here, at that precise moment in time, with superpowers while she looked like a worm. And why she was forced to follow her wishes, something that the redhead already knew.
Outside, said redhead was pacing in front of a news crew, doing a monologue about how villains should be found and crushed underfoot. "Leave the civilians, villain!" she grandstanded as Taylor squirmed around the corner. "Come out and fight me!"
The wording forced the worm to attack, instead of cowering, fleeing, or talking, which were Taylor's first instincts. So she "stood" (like some serpents might) and, using instincts from her new body, instincts she didn't know she had, she attacked.
How do worms "attack"? Simple: earthworms have only one function, which is to pass through earth, swallowing earth from a side only to "vomit" it from the other. So, Taylor vomited on Emma… who hadn't expected that at all. Between what she had in her intestines as a human, before, and what could be considered "earth" for a worm, her opponent was literally covered in shit.
Taylor got her first smile in two years, right then.
But Emma didn't take shit from anyone, especially Taylor. She had lucked out when getting powers, and wasn't limited to crystals: she also had a selective immunity to various forms of attacks (like some cape's arithmetic rule, it was limited to three at the same time). Her powers considered the pestilential vomit to be both a gas and acid attack, and it blocked the two deleterious effects on her body, leaving her unaffected for the moment. She still felt the shit on her skin, and the fact that it was eating at her costume. But she could fight. And she did.
Using her power over crystals to form a sword, she flew at the upright worm and sliced it in two. Taylor cried as the two halves fell on the ground, writhing in pain and bleeding whatever real blood she still had. The news team was disturbed to have witnessed (and filmed) what ended up looking as an execution, especially as Emma stayed there for a while, smiling as she waited for Taylor's body parts to stop moving.
And when they did, the redhead nodded grimly before flying towards the Bay, her thoughts being that she could get rid of the shit covering her by submerging in water.
The news crew had been promised an interview, but seeing that the heroine had flown away, they packed up and left. And they wouldn't be pressed to present their recording in too much a positive light, given the shitty attitude of the "hero".
In a town where people weren't that preoccupied with littering, Taylor's corpse was left undisturbed for a while. And, a few hours later, the two halves were completely dry, to the point of cracking when pressure was exerted… from inside. Two large centipedes got out, each with Taylor's face.
And the "girls" shook themselves as if awakening. And then they saw each other. The look of surprise became one of concentration, and then illumination.
"Behold …" the one coming from the "head" part of the deceased worm said.
"…the power…" the second continued.
"…of evolution!" they uttered together.
When you slice an earthworm in two, both parts could survive and continue working as independent beings. And Emma might have noticed her nemesis surviving her first fight, had she stayed.
Still, the current situation wasn't exactly the same. Taylor's power wasn't to have the body of a worm. Like those Case 53s, that had been the outside appearance of her body after getting her power. Her power was to evolve. To adapt. And to survive.
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To TrashWhile Taylor had her epiphany, Emma was being chewed out. In a figurative sense, of course, because she still reeked, the Bay's polluted waters not having removed much of the stink, rather adding chemicals to it. Because of her powers, the girl could ignore the stench… but the other people couldn't. Which is why she had been directed to the Master/Stranger cells, where she was behind a glass wall, speakers transmitting her superiors' angry voice.
"What possessed you to go hunt villains by yourself?" Piggot yelled from the other side of the room.
"She was a worm!" Emma answered with a dismissive tone. "I crushed her!"
"You can't go and kill villains!" Piggot replied. "It sets a bad precedent, and they'll escalate! Especially when you hunt them at their home!"
The woman might have yelled at a wall, given how Emma ignored her. And she recognized the signs before she ended up hoarse while having achieved nothing. Besides, she was actually speaking at a wall, since the girl was behind the glass wall keeping her in the cell.
"Armsmaster, get her into mental retraining." she says, turning around. "It was an error getting her in the Wards so early. You will send Shadow Stalker, too."
"Br… isn't it much?" the armoured hero hadn't shivered in cold or fright: he had almost said "brainwashing". And Piggot had heard the unspoken word, too.
"It's not brainwashing. It's breaking through that fucking generation's sense of entitlement! Have you not seen how she ignores anything I said that doesn't go her way? I haven't seen it in Hess in the beginning, but I sure as hell won't leave them having that attitude!"
The man nodded, and wrote a couple notes in his computer. Sophia and Emma ended up in heavy therapy. When shown the consequences of her actions, Shadow Stalker had enough empathy to recognize that her enemies had loving families too, much as she did.
Emma, though, had not only fully internalized the current crop of family-destroying policies, but she had superpowers insulating her thought processes from Master effects… and therapy. And she could fake compliance, too. Which meant that she returned to the field.
And while she was out, fighting Merchant scum, she had the distinct displeasure of being faced with two authentic villains: Skidmark and Mush. She was with Shadow Stalker, and the other girl had mentioned that they had to fall back and regroup and wait for reinforcements, but Emma's pride wouldn't have it and she continued to hack at the enemies even if that proved futile: Skidmark had fields up that sent anything she threw back at her, and Mush had enough trash around to reform any time she hacked at his composite body.
She was almost ready to accept her partner's wisdom when she noticed something in the last shipment of refuse Mush had absorbed: two overgrown millipedes with Taylor's face.
At this sight, Emma went berserk and focused her attacks there, ending up hacking through Mush's body to get at her nemesis. The man tried to escape, and even flee, but he merely retreated and ended up with his back to the wall, where he died of massive blood loss. With him immobile, Emma grabbed the two centipedes and slammed them into said wall so hard that they were completely splattered.
"…what?" Shadow Stalker asked as she finally joined her friend and co-worker – having taken her own calming bolt to the shoulder, due to Skidmark's defences, it had taken her some time before she was able to even move. And, by then, the Merchants' leader had fled.
"What, what?" Gemma Queen asked, her face still stuck in a smile.
"You killed him. You killed Mush. You killed again."
Emma looked surprised, and then annoyed, when she realized that, yes, the man made of garbage wasn't moving, or even breathing. And she stepped back in disgust when noticing the blood reaching her boots. "Who cares? He's trash, literally."
Sophia thought about how Piggot would react, when she'd learn about it – and she would, because even if no one filmed them, they had been seen. And then she thought about how Emma would react if she mentioned it, and preferred to keep silent.
Sophia Hess was a predator. But she also knew that there were other predators, out there. Preys were at the bottom of the food chain, but many predators were themselves the target of larger and meaner beasts. She didn't want to fight capes like Lung or Kaiser, for instance. And her overpowered "friend" turning crazy was starting to belong to that category.
As such, gone was the pity at the fact that she had triggered (which was unwarranted, thanks to a few internet searches about "how to buy powers"), leaving only contempt.
Facing her silence, Emma nodded decisively. "Good." she said, walking away and dusting her hands.
It would be quite a long time before Emma patrolled the same area again. She would find something strange, and her scream of rage would make Kid Win leave in fear for his life.
The place where she had smashed the Taylor look-alike centipedes wasn't splattered with insect innards anymore. Instead, an empty cocoon was gaping, almost mocking her.
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To Soar"Have you heard? There's a new cape in town!" Vista squealed, making Emma lift a mocking eyebrow. But since that was all, the younger girl didn't notice it and continued to address the group while watching something on the tablet. When Clockblocker coughed and motioned to the large flat-screen on the wall, she blushed and then activated the remote viewing.
And Emma reacted much more strongly, as the picture showed a butterfly. A human-sized butterfly, with facial features she knew well. And hated. Taylor was reborn. Again.
Instead of rushing to confront her archenemy, this time, Emma started by collecting information. She found that Taylor's body, while looking vaguely humanoid, was anything but, as she had an exoskeleton. She wondered about the resilience rating of a creature so fragile that it could only live one day, but the PRT had files on any cape, filled by a Thinker group in their employ, and it appeared that Taylor (codename Butterfly), had a form of rejuvenation (probably gained in her cocoon, she thought) that allowed her to heal quickly.
Given her wingspan, Taylor couldn't enter normal doors and inside places, and was limited to the larger (and abandoned) warehouses near the Docks… which were right between her former home and Merchant territory. And she didn't want to visit either, the first because her dad had seen her first death and had committed suicide, and the second because she had died there.
But Emma sought her out and quickly found the building she was hiding in. When seeing the human-sized butterfly leave through the opening in the roof, she squeezed inside and packed the place with explosives (thanks to her crystals). And she waited.
Taylor returned in the evening, after a day spent as an independent hero – with how Emma turned out, she didn't want anything to do with the Protectorate. Quite tired, she didn't notice the slight draft from the downstairs doors.
And then the place exploded.
Emma sauntered in the ruins, afterwards, to check her handiwork. And, sure, there was no "body" or even "spread innards" of her target. She suspected that she was properly dead and returned to her base.
However, despite being most sincerely dead, Taylor hadn't been vaporised. Instead, because she had established her "nest" upstairs (to have space for the bottom of her wings), the explosives directed her upwards. And her body parts, small as they were, were dispersed in a large radius around the warehouse.
Left alone, organic matter rots and dissolves. But it's seldom left alone, as various insects come and have at it, and then insect-eaters. And all of those living nearby get a new instinctual need to go somewhere. It takes quite a while to have all those at the warehouse ruin, but they eventually succeed. And come close enough to each other for Taylor's consciousness to emerge again.
Because, having been reborn twice already, there were very few ways to ensure she stayed down, now.
However, she wasn't one worm, two centipedes, or one butterfly, now: she was a swarm. She was the swarm, controlling it with a distributed sense of self and perception. And the swarm wasn't one made of a single species either: there were insects of various types, but also rodents and pigeons. Even if some ate the others, if left to their own devices, it was still Taylor.
She was also feeling the presence of other individual members of the same species, when they came close to the swarm, and was able to snatch them up when they came close enough.
And also, now that her consciousness was awake again, she stayed in control of her swarm even when they scattered.
The first time they did so, it had been quite a surprise. It was because of an instinctive fear of loud noise, and Taylor ended up scattered across the whole block before thinking of investigating. As it appeared, the loud noise had been gun-toting Merchants fighting against "Empire members" – because everyone can be excused when targeting white men with short blond hair, right? Even when they hold each other's hand?
As a swarm, she couldn't really be damaged by targeted firearms, and she sent her "body" over the two drug dealers. One escaped, leaving the other to be completely eaten in minutes. The two gay blonds had long left the scene, and Taylor directed her constituents to move the dead man's bones over the sewer opening.
The man's fate was ignored, and Taylor's swarm grew, while regulating itself at the same time: with a large amount of insects available, those animals which ate them grew in number and in strength, which then gave more food for those insects able to attack them. As if it was a game, their respective population grew and shrunk, and they adapted.
And Taylor led the evolutionary need behind that adaptation. Contrarily to her father, she had been interested in entomology, and especially those with extreme abilities: there were insects able to kill a human in one bite, or one sting. Some were able to produce a worthwhile acid, and others able to withstand fire. Some could even produce an explosive secretion.
Unfortunately, vertebrate were more difficult to change, mostly because their life cycles were longer by several orders of magnitude. As such, they wouldn't be used as more than a distraction in her next cape fight.
Yes, because Taylor's fate appeared to include fights with capes with a depressing regularity.
And it all came down because of Emma, again. Apparently, the girl kept a constant check on unusual insect behaviour in the city, because she was on her case as soon as she heard rumours of such. She knew when one of the Merchants "disappeared", and investigated. And she was the only one not to immediately consider the slurred explanation of "eaten by a swarm" as the result of drugs or intoxication. Especially when it had happened next to the warehouse she had exploded Taylor in.
Not finding her nemesis, though, she did as she often did while at school: she appealed to the authority. And the authority, in their little fight, was the one which had enabled it: Cauldron. The purveyor of powers-in-a-vial… and of the Nemesis program.
A few hours after having left a message on the voice box, Emma was called back.
"Your Nemesis is now a swarm." came the dry voice of the Doctor. Thanks to Clairvoyant and the Numbers Man, that kind of intel was easy to gather.
"I know-"
"Don't interrupt!" A pause. And then she was given directions. And the assurance that their obedience function was still active. Taylor would obey her.
Once there, Emma noticed the squirming mass of insects and almost vomited on the spot. She wanted Taylor to die, but knew that she wouldn't be able to squish all the insects in one go.
"Taylor, stop and listen." she said, feeling stupid to address a mound of insects. The fact that they stopped moving, though, comforted her in the assumption that it was her Nemesis, there. And that she was listening, and would obey, as Cauldron has indicated. "I want you to kill Lung before the week is out."
Not in one hour, or even a day, because she knew that impossible goals wouldn't work with this. But still a short enough time frame for Taylor not to weasel her way out of it.
Not merely attack, either, because she could send a gnat and be done with it. No, she wanted her to exhaust her whole swarm against an enemy who could escalate to insane levels, and she knew a dragon covered in fire would be impossible odds for a swarm: Taylor might be immune to targeted attacks, but she was sure that fire-related areas of effects were another thing entirely – if she could have been sure that Taylor wouldn't escape through holes in the ground, she would have used a flamethrower herself. Not that she could: with her usual way of doing things, she was driving Piggot mad, and she had been forbidden from ever getting any weapon.
When she left, Emma was in a better mood, but still annoyed at the world. And, to illustrate this, as toddlers often did, she stomped away. She even went out of her way to crush a few stragglers of Taylor's swarm. She quickly felt that it hadn't been the best choice, though, as pigeons dive-bombed her with their shit. And, of course, despite all her powers, she couldn't do a thing about that.
Taylor had been given a time scale, and she used much of it to finish her current project: hatching the worst insects of the world. Scorpions. Asian hornets. Brown recluses. Acidic ants. Exploding shrimps. She was helped in this with the rejuvenating aspects she had already experienced as regeneration. As it appeared, it was more and more the ability to control the insects' whole biology. Some of her attempts at better offense had even successfully incorporated atoms of metal along their claws.
As the time limit was growing to a close, she expanded her swarm, and her senses, to find the dragon-themed gang leader. Indistinctly, she heard him order his men to kill a bunch of children, and that was enough for her to attack him immediately. No nuance, no subtlety, no flying insects carrying spiders to enclose the man in a cocoon… no, she sent the whole swarm over him. And stung.
He shouted. Some of his men tried to help by hitting the swarm over him with their various weapons, but it only served to hit him. Enraged, he retaliated in kind, killing his own men in the process.
Soon, he was as flaming as always, but his perceptions were off: without seeing an enemy, he stopped growing, returned to human size… and died of the massive dose of venom in his veins.
Still, his brief incursion into dragonhood had burned most of Taylor's swarm "body" – all the insects and the pigeons, only leaving a colony of rats (and she had sent them one after the other, only, hoping that Lung would die of poison). Still, she had too few dedicated brain cells for her to be considered alive again. For a time.
Burning material is interesting: as it melts, sometimes, it allows you to shape it in another way. As soon as the rats find other creatures, in the sewers, their simple minds are taken over.
As Taylor emerges again, she's quite surprised to find a couple reptiles in the mix (two snakes and a crocodile). She's even more surprised to find a human, too – it was one of the Merchants' clients, and had overdosed before ending up in the sewers with most of his cognitive functions dead (and most of his body).
Having both reptiles and a human body, Taylor experimented further. Using fire, as envisioned, but also acid, she succeeded in creating an armour made of insects. And then, using other insects, she was able to replace the body's internal functions one at a time. Once the whole body was replaced, she was able to change its size and appearance, and worked hard to emulate a specific human body. One she had grown used to, before the whole Nemesis program irrupted in her life: her own. Her very human body. With enough practise (and cosmetics), she finally did so.
Once in her own "skin", so to speak, she returned "home": she wanted to sell it in order to buy something, somewhere, where she wouldn't be disturbed. But it wasn't to be: alerted of her presence by subverted PRT agents keeping watch on the house, Emma headed there.
"Looking to escape your fate, Taylor?" she asked. "God, you're pathetic."
The taller girl didn't reply. But it was because she was warring with herself, trying to attack Emma directly with overwhelming force. Cauldron's conditioning held, though. For the moment.
"So, let's change tacks. Our next fight will take place… at Winslow. Monday at 2pm. And you'll be naked. You understand?"
Taylor could only nod mechanically, and Emma left, cackling. When she noticed the agents looking at her warily, she scowled.
"What? Your watch is finished. Go home, or whatever."
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To BattleMonday arrived quickly enough, and Emma tried to warn Madison so that the girl could take pictures for her. But as soon as she found the shorter girl, Madison fled, not stopping before she was near the Principal's office.
Emma scowled again – being with Sophia, in Winslow, meant that she was assigned the same keeper, and her misdeeds got ignored. But she was still skipping school, and didn't want Blackwell to scold her about that.
She turned around, then… only to find herself face-to-face with herself. Sort of. And her duplicate doesn't waste time to monologue, socking her instead.
The duplicate? Taylor. Because Emma hasn't mentioned under which guise she had to appear. And, for Taylor, the minute she entered the school was the minute their fight started. She had been naked, too, as Emma had asked, but her outer layer had been expanded so as to appear as if she wasn't.
And with Emma unconscious, she felt a bit vengeful. Taking her to the boys' locker room and undressing her, before tying her wrists and elbows in her back, she then went to streak down the hallways, looking as Emma did right then: naked, and with her arms tied. Once she was sure the jocks followed, she led them to where she had stashed Emma's body before dispersing her body as a swarm of flies, bees, and cockroaches.
There was no love for the jocks, there: they had often struck her at Emma's command, before – only for the redhead to rescind the offer of "favours", afterwards. Both sides had done worse, too. Taylor decided that they could have each other, and face the consequences of their actions.
If you think that Emma was well-adjusted before, the event threw her into pure madness.
Almost frothing at the mouth, she accused Taylor of everything bad in the city. Thankfully, no one believed her. Mainly because, for everyone, "Taylor" didn't exist.
Realizing that she would soon be carted away if her sanity continued to show her as the crazy one, Emma finally kept mum for a while. Of course, during that time, the boys were thrown into jail – even those who hadn't been there at that time.
Taylor did exist, however, and she was quite tired of having Emma hanging between her and the rest of her life, like she was the sword of Damocles or something. As such, she sent her a simple message, with a picture of her on the Boardwalk.
Emma reacted without thought, almost: she swiped Carlos' badge and took command of a squad of PRT troopers, all armed with containment foam throwers, which were very visible. And body cameras, which were not.
And they headed towards the place where her nemesis was waiting for the show to end. If Emma had been more attentive, she would have asked to move elsewhere. As it was, she zeroed on the teen waiting for her.
Seeing them, Taylor was completely unafraid – mostly because that incarnation was a mere copy, the girl having learned to direct several swarm-made bodies – there were two different copies in the crowd, too, one an old woman and the other a little girl of around eight.
On top of that, Taylor had continued to train, getting insects of smaller and smaller size. Actually, as of now, her whole body was made of specialized insects, each of which was the size of a hundred normal human cells, and getting smaller every time. She had some crawlers so small that they could enter someone's body through the skin, travel the veins, and block specific ones. She could also enter their brain and create aneurysms. And she intended to use that ability on Emma.
Emma didn't stand the sight of her nemesis standing there and smirking at her, and she hefted her own foam launcher… except it had a flame at the end. To the surprise of anyone but her, she let go a jet of flaming napalm that splashed on Taylor and made her scream (it was painful, but it was also simulated).
"What the hell?" yelled the squad captain. "Gemma Queen! Stop!"
Emma did stop, but Taylor was still burning, her body crashing on the ground as if she was still human. Behind her, it was pure panic, people screaming as they sought to escape the murderous Ward – some people had the initial gout of napalm reaching near their feet, even.
"Containment foam, people!" shouted the captain. "It'll smother the fire!"
The troopers obeyed, encasing Taylor's body in foam, but Emma wanted to be sure of her nemesis' death, this time, so she manifested a sword-like crystal and ran at the blob forming around her erstwhile friend, piercing through it repeatedly. It came of bloody, even.
Sensing that their parahuman leader had gone quite mad, the squad captain redirected his trooper's aim towards her, enveloping her as well. At the same time, he called the PRT itself, asking for Panacea. And as soon as Emma was covered in the expanding foam, he directed his supply of foam-melting chemicals at where Taylor was. She was discovered quite burned and pierced.
Emma was only covered up to the neck, and she shrieked when she saw the body. She was not alone, as the crowd had already returned. But hers was the sound of rage. Her ability to form gems was not restricted by the foam, as only her movements were. She succeeded in forming a spike that pierced the head of the fallen girl before the squad captain struck her temple with the end of his foam dispenser.
"Why?" a little girl approached the group, tears falling freely. "Why did she attack my big sister?"
That was Taylor again, playing the crowd against Emma and her enablers. Emma hadn't noticed upon arriving, but Taylor's body had been smaller than usual, as if the girl was more twelve than sixteen. And the wailing of her "little sister" was like another nail in her coffin.
Taylor was a bit too successful in her endeavours, as the crowd swarmed the troopers, almost killing them in their anger, indignation, and sheer fury. And she came to a realization that, with the constant use she subjected them with, her powers had increased again: while before it had been pure luck to have a human brought into her swarm, she could now direct a mob with a few words. Not that that ability didn't exist among non-capes, though. The difference was that, once they followed her once, she could then micro-manage each of them. Not only that, but she could Master Emma, too.
It changed everything.
Taylor came to the idea that, rather than send the unpowered people in a failed battle against all the parahumans, she could better change things from the inside of their gangs, now that she could Master humans – not that she would say so to anyone, and she wouldn't tell anyone that she considered the PRT a gang too.
Everyone stopped moving, slowly opening the crowd for the arriving heroes to notice the change at the epicentre of the event: the little girl curled around her dead sister shook once, twice, and then white feathery wings sliced through the back of her robe.
As far as everyone was concerned, she had just triggered, instead of creating body parts she already knew (from the pigeons).
The PRT barely survived the PR shit storm, after this, and only the promise of sending Emma to the Birdcage seemed to appease the general opinion. Not that it served any purpose: while Emma had been ranting, Taylor had infested her body with insects, and especially her brain. She could now detect her wherever she was, and could strike her from afar. Not only that, but as she had explored the brain, and had noticed strange nodules that had become quite active when the girl worked her power. With Emma waiting for transfer in a holding cell, Taylor had her in her range for some experimentation and tweaks in the expression of Emma's powers. And then, once she knew more about the thing, as Emma was taken away, she had her diminutive minions eat through those structures, removing the girl's powers completely.
Panacea had been called, too, and could do nothing for the visibly dead body on the ground. The fact that Emma had recognized the healer and her intent, and had tried to attack her, bore her no good will once facing the girl's father in the parahuman prison. She would serve as a bony decoration for a long time, kept alive all through her suffering.
Taylor wondered if she'd have to do the same to Shadow Stalker, when realizing her identity as Sophia Hess, but the older teenager was surprisingly tame, after that.
Taylor's hero name? Angel. And she didn't need a mask to hide her identity, since her Changer powers could be "trained" to display another face and hairdo. In fact, "Angel" stayed like a preteen while Taylor "grew up".
Given her young age, she was almost excluded from all missions except PR, until Vista remembered how she was treated and asked for her to join. To at least fly and act as an "eye in the sky". If that meant that her bugs moved stealthily and gave her insights about each situation, before acting to help her allies when needed, that was even better.
Her registered powers?
Initially, it was Mover 2 (slow flight), Brute 2 (rapid healing), Changer 1 (wings).
Her true power?
After some more training, it ended up at ten (at least) in each and every category, the most obvious being Master and Changer (for which it was already there, she just hid it).
As Mover, she could fly and "teleport" through her swarm's range (always growing) by just dispersing a body and re-creating another. As Breaker, she could transform into a cloud of insects of various sizes, covering several city blocks. As Brute, she had a dense exoskeleton when needing to strike, and a body that didn't care being cut or shot through, as the wounds closed right after the offending item.
As Thinker, she could micro-manage everything her swarm did, and perceive through the senses of each of its individual creatures. As Stranger, she could move anywhere not hermetically closed, strike, and leave undetected. As Tinker, she was always refining her insects, making them stronger, making herself stronger at the same time. As Trump, as she has started with Emma and continued with various "real" villains, she was able to modify powers and disable them.
Finally, as Shaker, she had complete control of the area covered by her swarm. As Striker, she could rework the physiology of people she touched, like Panacea but more slowly. Especially as her creations were still under her control until she could find a way to solidify them. And Blaster was for her ability to act upon a selected ranged target, after it had been contaminated by her bugs.
With all that, she has no problem taking care of herself. Even when Cauldron tried to interfere. After all, even if one instance of Angel could be killed from afar, another could be created on the fly. In fact, she had several identities running around at the same time. Some moved in remote cities like New York or Paris, so as to escape should someone want to detonate a nuke on Brockton Bay. Or send the Slaughterhouse Nine there.
With several bodies, each with the sum of her powers, Taylor had several choices in how her powers appeared. One controlled the bees, another created butterflies, yet another was a family of giant cockroaches. Some registered as heroes, even, leading to some of them fighting another of her various identities.
Thankfully, her single human brain had long since ceased to exist. In fact, it had been incorporated in the alien shard that also provided the superpower and the necessary brainpower to manage all her duplicates. And since said power was Queen Administrator, she had no problem doing so.
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As Taylor takes her life in her hands, you drift up, up, and away. Soon, you find yourself back in the corridor, and the door slams shut with a sound that sounds final. With nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go, you advance in the corridor until you approach the second door.
To be continued… maybeAuthor's Notes: this blurb is based on the premise at the beginning of "Nemesis" from BeaconHill (on SpaceBattles dot com), a Worm fanfiction I recommend very much indeed – it's much better than this one, and also treats the whole situation with much more humour. As do the multiple Omakes based on it.