It was a bizarre feeling to which Taylor probably will never get used to sharing her senses with an insect. It was a rather bizarre experience, a radical change of perspective, understanding of one's powerlessness while retaining human senses.
Possessing several bodies, more parts to something that always was whole and united allows her to gain quite an experience. She'd preferred if it didn't felt so hideously uncomfortable every time the bug died or Taylor's vision became once again whole.
Really, the first time the bug died while she was doing her homework she nearly parted ways with a nice cup of tea and a cinnamon roll that were secured inside her stomach. Good thing she maintained enough of self-control not to waste precious food, because she was so sure that she will in the moment when the feeling of bugs insides being crushed washed over her mind. The cause wasn't exactly aided by the feeling of her perception of reality being turned off to only return in one piece.
The best way to describe would be when someone tries to replace a broken light bulb. They turn off the current, change it, and only then turn the electricity on. She essentially has a mini-blackout every time "split" is canceled. Which can be rather extremely bad if several hosts are destroyed at the same time, Taylor didn't exactly have a way to overcome this problem. Taylor promised herself to think about the solution later, now she has a much more intriguing thing to behold.
Dialogue between people. Such a rare occurrence, amirite? Well, it was a rare sight to behold for her for two very specific reasons. One, her brother was a part of it by his own volition with someone that isn't her or their parents. Two, it didn't really felt or looked like a very warm talk.
There was a distinct feeling of them trying to fuck each other over —and rather cold at that. It is hard to explain, but Taylor could feel with her inner gut that there was happening something much more than she could understand… and Taylor genuinely doesn't like to be left in the dark after recent events.
The feeling of being helpless in a completely foreign world with her brother bleeding out in her arms – wasn't the most pleasant experience. At that exact moment, Taylor Hebert felt insignificant like an insect, really. Vast cosmos above her head, the grandiose structure under her feet and nothing else with Taylor, but a body of someone she holds dear.
She mused that she could call that poetic irony, really. Taylor's own unimportance to the grand scheme of things and utter understanding of how easy it to lose everything in the face of bigger is very like being an insect… or a spider.
You work without pause, putting everything that you and your ancestors ever gathered to create a magnificent web, that will allow you and your children to thrive and see the future. Only to be destroyed by some being more powerful than you — with a single hand sweep.
Being parahuman essentially makes you this "being" to civilians. You possess much power then you probably should and without notice or care ruining the lives of others.
For such an example, you need to look no further then Heartbreaker or anyone from Slaughterhouse Nine.
Those guys were very much untouchable for anyone, but parahumans. Their powers would allow them to easily control or outright genocide whole countries if they wanted. It's likely was a good thing that they have much more down to the earth goals. Build a harem of beautiful women and kill just enough people, so there would be some left for the following "tour". Such a "sympathetic" goals indeed…
"Well, that disappointing… I am sorry, Jerry, but you would not do. I need to see them both. Return home," Whispered Taylor to herself and used her control, forced Jerry's body — or her, for this matter — to sneak unnoticed and return to our room.
She could create new hosts without separating from Jerry, but Taylor decided that she needed some quality over quantity. Managing four perspectives is harder than managing three. As if each time another layer of dirty glass was added on top of her glasses. After "four" layers, she might as well not have glasses, because her vision reverts to the level of a mole in daylight - without her specs, she can only recognize splashes of different colors, though.
Jerry returned mostly unnoticed by their grandma, but there was a moment of silence when rather big centipede crossed the doorstep between the guest room and front hall. She couldn't hear their chat from there clearly, but just silence either meant there was no connection between Jerry's actions and silence, or Diane didn't care altogether.
"It's possible. Our gram saw worse thing according to the news."
Chuckled Taylor, remembering barely readable news articles translated by Lio from French to English. She admired his drive, but trying to translate news articles using a shitty-old dictionary instead of using some free sites on the internet remains not his best idea.
From what they managed to understand, their dear grandmother had balls of steel – figuratively of course, but you never know what these mysterious tinkers can achieve… Apparently, she tased some unfortunate soul with superpowers into submission. Tased directly in the balls.
The guy was some kind of low-level blaster that can shoot energy from his fingertips. Nothing special, in reality, made especially worse by a guy using it as a glorified toy gun. He tried to rob her in some valley and got too preoccupied with a phone call, their gram being a ruthless woman she is, exploiting this opportunity and violated taboo —repeatedly punch the poor guy in the crotch and then tased for a good measure after he was sobbing on the ground.
Lio grimaced a little after reading the article, while Taylor was quietly cackling like possessed after giving a quick glance to the photo with a "victim" face. Deep inside she felt sorry for the poor soul, but ultimately no one likes thief and robbers, especially when they try to use their powers for it.
While reading it was a rather entertaining experience, she made a mental note to by Taser. And pepper-spray for a good measure. You never know what could happen in life and having more than one way to put somebody out of commission is always useful. In her case, she has more than enough, but just in case if all her bugs somehow died and she couldn't reach more.
Jerry crawled along her body, making her shiver a little from an unpleasant feeling that was quickly forgotten in favor of setting up his old behavior pattern in place and finding a new host for "spying".
She willed one of the house spiders to come a bit closer to her from one of the corners and after experiencing disabling of her senses for a moment, she once again could feel the world double the amount of normal.
Taylor hoped that she didn't miss anything meaningful or useful. Despite their relatively frequent talks at the table, she still didn't know much about Diane's personal history. The female twin understood what kind of a person their gram rather fast — quick-witted, snarky, and a bit lazy, which is something of an expected from the person of her affiliation.
While Taylor once again tried to mentally compile and sort out all the gathered information about their dear gram, small spider already reached his destination and now was comfortably chilling just above Lio and Diane. Concentrating on spider's unspidery senses and once again Taylor was carefully listening and noting interesting details from the "little chat".
"…Not very heroic powers you got there, Tay?" With smug expression said Diane looking directly at the spider, which made Taylor stumble a bit.
"How did she-" But the moment spider's body shifted a little, it revealed Lio pointing at the spider with a little smile on his face. "How did he-"
"My dear sister, it is not polite to eavesdrop other conversations, would you be so kind as to attend our little meeting?" Lio made especially clear by his tone, that he didn't really care about her overhearing their dialogue, but that it would be most welcome to talk about the matter with all of them present.
"Show-off." With this Taylor lowered the spider from the ceiling onto her brother's lap. With a grunt, she forced herself to leave the snug bed and swiftly descend using stairs onto the ground floor. She arrived rather fast, thanks to her skipping several stairs in an attempt to not to risk them breaking under her — and specifically the one with a hole rotten trough it.
She entered the guest room with a rather neutral expression and after a quick nod, set beside her brother. But before she said anything, Taylor silently punched Lio in the shoulder.
"Jerk…" She said in a relatively mellow voice and smiled weakly. She relaxed and leaned back on the sofa, allowing herself a moment of comfort, after being forced out of her bed.
"Cute." Dryly said Diane, allowing the twins to do the twins thing while filling another wineglass.
This whole situation started to make her head hurt. She liked her grandchildren, but Diane could easily say that Lio was pretensions. While it wasn't a bad quality per se, it was a thing that Diane didn't like to deal with.
He made too much effort to look cool without having anything to back it up. It will likely work with his future teammates — if he executed them a good power demonstration — and with the general public — if he once again would have some time to prepare the stage for the play, but to his attempt to act like a politician fallen flat for her.
She noticed that he had a rather good idea what to do, but, probably due to nativity — or arrogance, he was acting as if he is the one in command. While don't understand his place is a really bad thing, that she will try to correct in the future, overall for a fourteen-year-old it was a rather impressive demonstration.
So she allowed him to enjoy the feeling of talking to an "equal", but it time to talk for real.
She coughed making the twins stop their little whisper contest and made them pay attention to her.
"So that's all great and all, but why did you tell me? Like I had my suspicions about you either being drug-addicted or being part of the gang due to yours regular attempt to get from home in the evening, returning rather exhausted or with some minor cuts and bruises," She stopped for a second to taste some red wine from her glass and after a short pause continued.
"…You know, stress do all kind of thing and you being dumb teenagers in this city, that apparently is a feeding grounds for all kind of thugs really gave me some worrying ideas. But you know, now that is thinking about it, you are being in the gang is far less problematic then you being parahuman and wanting to become capes." She sighed and massaged her temple with her free hand.
Both teenagers were sitting and paying attention to her words with rather non-telling expressions.
Looking at their faces, she could only exhale and curse everything in her mind.
"Who said that we wanted to become capes, Gram?" Deadpanned Taylor.
"Tay, dear, please, do not take me for a braindead. A lot of people done that and now they either homeless — or my minions. …The point is, knowing how Annette raised you, I am willing to bet my company, now that you have powers, you also have this weird idea that you just must to try and shake things up."
"Touché." Answered Taylor admitting defeat.
At this moment, Lio decided to re-enter the conversation.
"Now that we understand each other, Gram, we can talk about "why". You see, now that we have powers, we also need funds and support so that our actions can have some weight behind them." He said relaxed.
"Why don't you both enter Ward program then? A lot of peers, financial support, and actual legitimate job. Looks good to me…" Asked Diane a bit confused. In her eyes, the benefits were good enough, far better than official suits in Europe get, anyway.
Twins shared a fast glance and Taylor nodded to her brother.
"We discussed the possibility, but ultimately decided against it."
"May I ask, why?" Grandmother asked without much enthusiasm. It was a useless struggle, but she was interested in the reason of such refuse.
"Freedom — and our unwillingness to be an errand boy… or girl, for that matter. Protectorates resources stretched thin across the continent. They lack human resources, and Brockton Bay is a good demonstration of this problem. Several major bands with one of them having a comparable amount of power to the local branch of Protectorate. While the organization itself is not one to blame, we decided that it would be a better idea to create our own team and work independently." Explained Lio carefully.
"Pride, then…" A quick thought appeared inside her a bit drank head.
"You want me to sponsor you, because you want to play in the sandbox with your own toys? For real?" Diane asked with a hint of disappointment.
"Essentially, yes." Answered Lio, while Taylor's cheeks were a bit red from the embarrassment. Not that Gram put it this way, it indeed sounds like this.
Diane sighed so hard, that Taylor felt a metaphorical thud against the floor. It made her shiver a little, while impression on Lio's face hardened a little.
"Kids, think about what you actually demand from me, please… You both either arrogant or completely out of the loop when it comes to people. You want me, your grandmother, that lost her daughter several weeks ago, to willingly sponsor her grandchildren so they can go out in the middle of the night to fight complete and utter psychos, in futile attempt to do… what? Change the world? Acquire glory? Clench your own thirst for blood?" Diane started to talk becoming more louder and starting to shake the more words escaped her mouth.
Ignoring his Grandmother's rant, Lio stood up and challenged her by looking at her, directly in the eyes.
"First." He said. "Our wish is to change the world for the better. Reduce the suffering of the people, allow them to do their best for the sake of others, and help them to become something more than just another name carved on the tombstone."
Taylor looked at her brother as if he grows a second head, while Diane screamed internally from how stupid and naïve it sounded. She wanted to scream, to tear her own hair away and even bang her head against the wall. But she managed to stop herself from inflicting self-harm thanks to the years of dealing with people much worse than this little shit.
"Okay. Breath, Diane. Breath… Well, I think that's enough talk for tonight, kids. I need to think and think hard. We talk tomorrow, but now off to bed, both of you."
Both of them left with room wishing good sleep to each other, but a wide smile on her brother's face concerned her greatly.
When they silently entered the room, Lio twisted on his heels to be face-to-face with Taylor and showed her a big thumb up.
She could merely shake her head and muse about her twin optimistic way of thinking.