Hatching 1.2

I barely had time to revel in my discovery, or even really register it, when I heard footsteps outside. I tore my eyes away from the thing on my bed and looked to the door. Of course someone was coming to investigate, it hadn't exactly been quiet when it broke a hole in reality to crawl through.

I was actually panicking more now than I had been when it appeared. A mess of cracks shattering the air like it was a two-dimensional image was an unknown. A startling, mind-boggling unknown, but one that left me more stunned than anything. This was a threat that someone would find out something they could use against me, and that was something I knew all too well.

If a doctor saw this thing, I'd immediately be outed as a cape. Everyone in Brockton Bay knew what had happened to New Wave after they'd revealed their civilian identities, at best I'd be killed. At worst I'd have to go back to school as a known cape, the Trio would use that to tear what little remained of my life down, and I'd have the Birdcage hanging over my head if I ever tried to do anything about it.

Dying of a panic induced heart attack was really looking like the best option right now, but that wouldn't do anything abut the footsteps still getting closer. I turned to the thing on my bed, which had turned around to look at the door itself.

"They can't see you!" I hissed as loudly as I dared.

The footsteps were nearly to the door and I was about to grab the thing to stuff under my covers before it finally moved. It leapt down from the bed and skittered around the side, shoving itself into the crevice between the bed and the wall. A moment later the door opened and a nurse poked his head in.

He looked around the room, his expression a bit perplexed. "Did you hear something just now?"

My mouth was open to lie and say no before I thought better of it. Anyone else he asked would say yes, and then I'd be the one whose story didn't match up. "Yeah," I said instead, "What was it?"

He paused for a moment, and I was afraid my brief hesitation gave away my feigned ignorance. I was acutely aware of the thing hiding behind the bed, almost more focused on it in case it started to move than the nurse. Then he shrugged and stepped back out of the room, closing the door behind him.

I stayed tense for a few more seconds as his footsteps moved away from the door, then sagged back onto the bed. God, a cape for all of a minute and I already nearly got revealed. Wouldn't that be an auspicious start to a heroing career!

A heroing career. The idea seemed so ludicrous, but I couldn't really imagine anything else. A villain? Yeah, and get stomped flat in two seconds after the first hero to meet me punts my monster thing into orbit.

Still, I let myself dream a bit. Every moral thrown at me since I could read said the bad guys never won and crime didn't pay, but considering how many villains were still around, I wasn't sure how correct that was. Rob one bank, and I might have enough money to afford an actual high school instead of Winslow's public cesspool. Pay off the medical bills I was racking up right now, fix that rotten step on the porch…

No, that was a dangerous path to go down. Rob one bank for some good reasons, and then I'd just keep finding more and more good reasons that warranted a major theft. Besides, villains… they were really just bullies on a larger scale, weren't they?

I shuddered as I imagined people looking at me the same way I looked at Emma. No, being a villain would be a hard pass. I'd heard about mercenary capes though, ones who didn't stick to a side. I dismissed that almost as soon as I thought of it. No, that had all the problems of being a villain plus the distrust that would come with selling loyalty for a paycheck.

I laughed quietly to myself. Daydreams were all well and good, but they wouldn't actually help me. Being a hero was my best, and really only option. The city had a Wards team, I just had to… Just had to what, exactly? Walk up to them with a power I just got and didn't understand asking them to take me on because of how nifty my monster thing was?

A quiet chittering sound came from behind the bed and the thing in question poked its head out of the gap. That promptly got rid of my relief.

"No!" I whispered, "Stay hidden!"

It paused, then withdrew back to its hiding place. I paused for a second, making sure it would stay there, then sighed. Start small, deal with what I can, then work my way to the bigger problems. First, keeping this thing hidden. It seemed to understand that I wanted it to hide and it knew how to do that, so that was one problem down. Of course that, raised plenty of other questions about how smart it was.

Which brought me to part two: understanding my power. I could make some sort of beetle-thing and… that was it, really. It could apparently open a locker door, but that was hardly superhero material. I laughed quietly to myself again. That'd sure be intimidating, wouldn't it? Taylor the hero, with the incredible power of having a bug-manservant to open lockers for her! I could practically see the criminals turning themselves in already.

So if I was going to do anything, I needed to learn more about my power. Of course, I was still in a hospital. I doubted they'd just kindly choose to not notice me experimenting with a brand new power in one of their rooms. That'd have to wait until I was home then.

So on to problem three: learn more about the cape scene. Between "knowledge is power," "knowing is half the battle," and a dozen other trite phrases, it was pretty firmly ingrained that knowing what you were getting into was important. I couldn't really disagree on that. I'd read plenty of cape magazines, several of which had even touched on Brockton Bay, and from what little I remembered I knew it'd be a supremely bad idea to pick a fight with a random cape if I didn't know what I was getting into.

If I'd known I was going to get powers down the road I would have paid more attention to the articles about Brockton Bay, or checked out the Parahumans wiki-slash-forum I'd heard about. Well, I couldn't do anything about the past, but I could work on now.

I shifted up onto one elbow and leaned off the side of the bed, craning my head to look back in the crack where my thing was hiding. It was pretty curled up back there and the shadows did wonders to obscure its form. If I didn't know what I was looking at, I might have mistaken it for a novelty football or some kid's toy.

"Stay there." I said quietly, trying to impress on it the urgency of my request. "Do. Not. Move."

It didn't respond except to curl itself up a little tighter. I felt that odd connection I had to it twinge and I gritted my teeth a bit. Right, that. I'd been doing my best to ignore it and focus on my thoughts, which was simultaneously difficult and easy. Difficult because I couldn't find a way to shut it out, easy because it didn't really make enough sense to be anything more than a background hum.

I could tell it was there and that it was doing something, but it was in the same way I'd know a tv was showing me something if I'd just opened my eyes for the first time. It was plenty of sensation but no context to it and I didn't have the experience to grasp the meaning. It didn't hurt, which was a small mercy. Really, it reminded me of when Emma and Madison had pointed conversations about me within earshot. It wasn't really something I could do anything about, even ignore, but it didn't really do anything to me.

I tried to derail that train of thought before I started dwelling on the bullying again. Cape stuff, that was what I needed to focus on. It seemed like this was the best I was going to get from my minion thing, so I rolled over a bit farther to snag the call button dangling from the heart monitor they had sitting next to my bed.

It took a minute before a nurse came in, the same one who'd come by a little while ago asking about the sound. "Sorry to bother you," I said, completely meaning it, "But do you have a computer or something I can use? I'm going to be here for a bit and I didn't really get to bring anything with me."

An understanding look crossed his face and he nodded. "Of course, I'll be right back."

With that he was gone, leaving me alone again. Well, as alone as I could be with a monster under my bed. Or behind it, if you wanted to be technical. It hadn't come out, which proved that it either understood my commands or it was just naturally averse to beings seen. I hoped it was the first. If it was the second, it would be pretty hard to do anything as a cape when my power was a natural coward.

The door creaked open and I perked up. But instead of the nurse, it was Dad. "Hey kiddo," he said, a touch regretfully, "I'm sorry, but I have to beat it back to work. I can come back later tonight, bring you some dinner."

I felt a bit torn at that. By all rights, I should want to share a dinner with my dad. We were so distant, I should reach to him trying to reach out with open arms. But at the same time, that distance made it awkward. It just wouldn't sit right forcing a dinner like that. And with how our conversation went earlier, I wasn't sure if I'd be up for giving him a chance to continue questioning me about school.

"You don't have to," I said, shaking my head, "I don't want you to have to go out of your way."

"Oh, Taylor, no!" he hurried to reassure me, "It'd be fine. I can swing by that Italian place, maybe Fugly Bob's?"

That almost made me reconsider. Food was always good, and I had a hollowness in my stomach and a bandage on my arm that made me think I'd been getting fed through an IV drip for the past week and a half. "No, it's alright. Besides, I've been asleep since I got here and I leave tomorrow morning. If I let you bring me dinner, when will I get the chance to try hospital cuisine again?" I managed a smile at that, trying to make a joke. It had used to come so easy, or maybe I just hadn't taken anything serious back then.

It seemed to work though, because he grinned a bit in return. "Ah, yes, the gourmet spread of a hospital. How could you turn down such a feast? I can still come by around dinner anyways, just so you have someone to talk to."

I was already shaking my head, and I felt a bit guilty about that. "No. I'm… still trying to process things. I just want to be alone for a while."

His face fell at that. In that moment, I remembered how he'd withdrawn into himself after Mom died and I wondered how much I reminded him of himself. "If you're sure." He said reluctantly.

"Yes. Thank you though." My voice was quiet now. I didn't trust it not to break if I tried to speak louder.

He bobbed his head twice, a sort of defeated nod. "Alright. I'll be back first thing tomorrow to pick you up."

"Thank you." I said again. "I love you."

He managed a weak grin at that. "Love you too, kiddo. See you tomorrow."

He stepped out, letting the door swing shut behind him. I sighed and flopped back onto my pillow again. Why was it this one conversation twisted my stomach as much as the Trio's teasing? After a moment, I reconsidered that. Maybe not all their teasing, Emma's always had a way to get at me. Whether that was because of the specific details she'd learned about me during our years as best friends and now turned that against me, or just the general sense of betrayal, her barbs were always the worst out of the Trio. Madison and Sophia though, they usually just threw insults at me until something stuck.

Still, the answer was pretty obvious. It all came back to Mom's death. In the months afterwards he'd withdrawn almost entirely into himself, to the point where he barely acknowledged me. Even two years and some months later, that gap between us still hadn't fully mended. Now I was the one enforcing that separation and that left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even if he hadn't succeeded, he'd tried to bridge that gap, and by working against it I felt like I was spitting on his efforts.

I groaned, rolling uncomfortably on the hospital mattress. It wasn't like that, that had been months of self-enforced solitude. This was just one day, a measly twenty-four hours where I wanted some space to think. I hoped, at least. Who knew what he'd said to himself to justify that time.

I tried to shake myself out of those thoughts, looking for something else to focus on. Where was that nurse? Wanting for options, I turned my attention towards my connection to the thing behind the bed.

I tried to pay attention to it just a little, cracking my metaphorical eyelids. It didn't really help. The stream of whatever-this-was just kept being there, stubbornly refusing my attempt to take a peek. I wanted to try and focus on it more, but I got the sense that would be a terrible idea to do in a public space. If focusing on it switched our brains or let it possess me or something, the last thing I would want to do is try it out in the middle of a hospital.

Still, though I couldn't quite grasp what the connection was giving me, I still felt something. I didn't notice it at first, only when I gave up and tried to ignore it again. In between the attempts to understand the connection, I'd found my eyes absentmindedly focusing on other things. It was mild, incredibly so. I only noticed because once I stopped focusing on the connection I found myself slightly confused at my focus.

Hesitantly, I tried to tap the connection again. Now that I was looking for it, if could feel it set in. Almost unconsciously I found my eyes draw to certain things. The overhead lights, the heart monitor, the doorknob. They weren't glowing or special or anything, they just seemed more interesting than the other things I could see.

Strange. Was this some other facet of my power? Did having this thing here do something to my perception? I turned my head to look at the other side of the room, trying to see what I would focus on there in case it helped me narrow down the nature of the effect. But when I looked to the other side, I didn't feel anything.

It took me a minute to realize as I paid attention to my own eyes to see what involuntarily caught my interest, but nothing happened. I frowned, closing one eye and then the other. This made even less sense than it had before. I looked back to the other side, and sure enough, I found my attention drawn to those same things.

I groaned, letting my head sag into the pillow. Why did powers have to be so complicated? Why couldn't I have gotten flight or super strength or lasers? Instead I got some weird bug monster that can open lockers and-

And… a connection to it. A hunch crossed my mind and I leaned over the side of the bed to look at it. It was in the same place it was before, curled up and watching through the crack between the bed and the wall. More specifically, it was watching out the side that let it see the part of the room where I'd noticed my focus changing. That was worth checking.

"Turn around." I ordered, "Look out the other side."

It did so, uncurling its tail from around itself and unfolding its legs from where it'd held them tightly against its body, spinning around awkwardly in the cramped space before plopping back down. Once it had moved, I looked up to the side of the room where I'd noticed the effect before. Nothing.

I turned to look at the other side of the room, the side it was now looking at. It took me a minute to notice again, but it was there. My focus settled on the window frame of an open window and an electrical outlet this time. That was definitely interesting.

One question answered at least. Whatever it was, it seemed to be limited to what the thing saw. But that still raised a dozen new questions, most prominently being what that weird focus was about anyways. With the heart monitor and the lights I might have thought it was drawing my attention to electrical things, but it had also singled out the windowsill and a doorknob.

And that was just the tip of it. How did that focus even work? It hadn't done anything when I was trying to ignore the connection so it clearly required me to be perceptive to it. Maybe the thing acted like some sort of living modification to my brain, changing how I focused? But then why did the thing have to see the same thing as me for it to work?

It could just be really complicated. I'd heard about powers like that, where they had strict or bizarre qualifications for when and how they worked. Maybe I had to see something to the basic input, it had to see the same thing for cross-reference, and then it broadcast the final result back to me. But why even do that in the first place? I knew not all powers were great, but a mild focus on random items seemed more like a character tic than a superhuman ability.

I groaned again. God, I really just wanted to go home where I could test my power in peace. Luckily, my frustration was soothed by the return of the nurse. Better than a desktop, he'd brought me a computer tablet. It was encased in a lilypad green protective case with frog designs on it and a clip on one side that probably hooked to a security cable, though the spiderweb of cracks across the screen indicated that neither measure was very good about protecting it. Still, it was internet and I'd accept any cracked screen or slow connection if it meant something to do.

He slowed just enough to tell me to buzz again if it got low on charge, then left without waiting for my thank you. A but rude, but I couldn't blame him. This was a hospital, he probably had more important things to do than bringing one girl a computer. I was still relieved at his haste anyways. The bug thing hadn't made any move to come out when he arrived, but the sooner he was gone the less chance something could go wrong.

I turned on the tablet and quickly swiped to the internet browser. One search later and I was looking at the homepage for Parahumans Online. I hadn't really used the site much before, but I still had a decent idea of its layout. I started skimming pages and opening links, keeping one ear on my bug thing in case it tried to come out.

The main page and its related links were all news pieces and reports. Interesting if I wanted to check up on the Triumvirate or read the newest Endbringer attack projections, but not very useful to me unless Brockton Bay suddenly became a national focus.

What I wanted was the forum and wiki that were part of the site. A few searches for Brockton Bay in both, a few secondary searches based on what I found, and soon enough I had nearly two dozen tabs open.

My initial suspicions were correct, being a villain was off the table here. The only cape villain groups in the city were just the gangs I already knew about, and none of them were good options. The Azn Bad Boys were out simply by virtue of my ethnicity, even if the list of their major enterprises didn't turn my stomach. The Empire 88 was a collection of assholes ranging from racist to neo-Nazi, not anyone I'd be caught dead working with. The Archer's Bridge Merchants were the only ones without heavy undertones of racism or discrimination, but they dealt almost entirely with drugs, and I'd seen enough kids at school go down that spiral to stay away myself.

It really said something about the state of the city that it had three major gangs all run by capes, and all of them were majorly shitty. Not like a gang could really be much else, I'd seen the constant tensions and fights between the kids in Winslow who decided it'd be fun to run with gang colors. And that was just the kids in school. On the streets, it was surely much worse, and I'd heard enough PSAs from school to know that.

There were a few other links on the Brockton Bay villain community, but nothing else major. I didn't even have to click the links to know they weren't as important, since none of them even had proper names. Still, I opened them anyways. No harm in reading a little more.

As expected, they weren't much. The one labeled Coil's Organization led to a single page about a guy trying to move in on the city with unpowered mercenaries. The entire article was a measly five sentences long, with a bright read header box talking about how the subject of the page still wasn't confirmed as a cape and how the article might be deleted.

Faultline's Crew was slightly more promising. They didn't seem to be strictly villains but mercenaries like I'd considered before. Still, the list of their known jobs definitely seemed to skew more towards villainy. Besides that, their introductory paragraph said they were only based in Brockton Bay, while their job list noted them showing up all over the country. Moral quandaries aside, that wouldn't work anyways. This city was my home, Dad's home. I wanted to help it, not abandon it to go fight someone else's crimes, as selfish as I knew that was.

The last page was the least helpful, simply labelled "unknown criminal group." It was even shorter than Coil's page, just a few sentences about a group of powered thieves. Membership unknown, activities unknown, and a red box at the top talking about how the information on the page was unconfirmed and subject to review.

Besides that, there were a few links to independent villains in Brockton Bay. The only ones I recognized on the list were Über and Leet, while the rest were unknowns. Circus, Grue, Hellhound. A lot of names, and a lot of potentially unfriendly powers.

I switched tabs to look at the Wards in the city. Their pages were pretty well fleshed out, mostly with information from press releases and the odd Protectorate-sanctioned interview. Despite that, the pages didn't really seem to say anything about them. Nothing but the bare-bones details of their powers, nothing about them as people. It made sense, I supposed. If someone could just read a wiki to learn all about the heroes' powers and tactics, cape fights would probably end pretty poorly for the good guys.

Still, what I was reading painted a picture. Triumph, enhanced strength and a sonic shout. Aegis, flight and incredible durability. Kid Win, a Tinker with a hoverboard, laser pistols, and who knows what else. Vista, with the very vague power of spatial distortion. The list went on. Seven different capes, all with powers that packed a punch.

And on top of all that there was still the Protectorate presence, which was led by Armsmaster. Anyone who'd heard about the Protectorate had heard of him. He was one of the top ten capes in the whole organization, plastered in all the group shots of the big names and with more merchandise to his name than any other cape in the city.

All in all, it was a strong team. Looking back to the Wards, my best option to be a hero, they were big guns. I leaned over the bed again, looking at my bug thing. Curled up and crammed behind a bed, it looked small, timid. It had freaked me out a bit when it appeared, but as soon as I realized what was happening it hadn't been very scary. In fact, I was pretty sure anyone who saw it could probably panic and kick it across the room without ever realizing what it was.

It really was a crappy power. With everything they could already do, they didn't need me. They probably wouldn't even want me. What was I hoping for, anyways? That a group with a time-stopper and two different people with super strength suddenly found a need for a knee-high monster servant, with a scrawny loser along as a bonus? Maybe they'd hire me out of pity, make me the one who read them stuff from a computer or made them snacks for when they were done beating up the villains.

I realized I was tearing up and roughly wiped my eyes. No. Fuck that. I was a loser at school and a loser at home, but I would not let myself be a loser as a cape.

I flipped through a few tabs, trying to remember a detail that had caught my eye. There, on Shadow Stalker's wiki page. She was a Ward, but she'd been a vigilante before. That was my ticket. My power might not be the best, but I would make it work. I'd learn to use it, do the hero thing on my own, and once I'd racked up enough successes, proven myself as a cape, then I'd reach out to the Wards.

I found myself nodding, determination setting in. If I showed I could still be a hero with a weak power, on my own no less, they'd have to accept me. And once I was a Ward, thing could only get easier, right? Going from a solo act to getting backed up by those big-name capes would be like a vacation. Not to mention the idea of getting paid and transferred to Arcadia High with the rest of the Wards.

I grinned at that thought. If I hadn't had enough incentive to prove myself as a cape before, that certainly did it. To get away from Winslow, from the Trio, from Emma… I'd fight gangs until I dropped for that kind of reward.

So I changed back to the page about Brockton Bay's villains and started reading. To join the Wards I needed to do well, and to do well I needed to know what I was getting into. I ignored the independent villain and speculative pages for now and focused on the gangs. I couldn't do much about one or two villains on their own, but I could definitely do something about all the drug dealers, thugs, and other gang members that plagued the streets. I just had to make sure I knew the villains that might be backing them up.

Some of them I recognized from warning PSAs and police reports. Lung and Hookwolf were the big ones, but there was also the likes of Kaiser, Oni Lee, and Krieg. It was pretty clear that the E88 was the main threat, with almost as many capes as the local Wards and protectorate put together. By comparison the ABB only had two capes, while the Merchants had a scattering of weaker ones.

Also interesting was the number of villains that were listed as inactive or relocated. They didn't seem as immediately important, but I wanted to be prepared. So I read about Purity, Night, Fog, the Butcher, Marquis, and a dozen other villains that ranged from too minor to care about to major threats that had luckily moved on.

I combed through the wiki, trawled dozens of forum threads, and looked up a few news articles. When my focus started to waver I shifted gears, looking up things to help me be a hero. I needed a costume, and while I couldn't exactly order one online, I could still get an idea on what I needed. Besides that I looked at classes, skills I thought could be useful to me. I didn't have a lot of money, not more than two or three hundred dollars I'd saved up from allowance and birthday gifts, but that would be enough for some weekend courses.

I debated whether to sign up for some martial art or self-defense class, but I decided against it. If I figured out how to work my power and got lucky, I'd never have to actually fight someone myself. A first aid course was more tempting though. Being a hero wasn't just about fighting bad guys, right? It was about helping people and that meant knowing how to help them if they were injured. After checking the price and address, I made a mental note to myself to look up the sign-up site again once I got home.

At one point a nurse interrupted me, bearing a tray of food. I set the tablet aside so she couldn't see the screen and took my food, eating it while she checked me over. A piece of stringy chicken, some soggy green beans, a cup of water, and some almost tasteless gelatin almost made me wish I'd taken Dad up on his offer for food. Still, is suspected it could have been a five-course meal and it still would have been tasteless. The whole time the nurse was there, I was too nervous that she might see what was hiding behind the bed.

I mechanically shoveled food into my mouth while keeping an eye on her the whole time. Luckily, she was either dedicated to her job or was just going through the motions, because she didn't look at anything that wasn't directly related to her purpose there. Still, I only relaxed when she left. I set the food tray aside on the side table and pulled the tablet out almost as soon as the door closed, quickly getting back to work.
My research came to an end sooner than I'd thought when the tablet buzzed and flashed a 5% battery warning at me. I looked up for the first time in hours, realizing that the sun had set at some point. I quickly closed all my tabs and deleted the history before the battery could die. It wouldn't be very good if the next person to use it found all my at least somewhat incriminating web activity.

That done, I set the tablet on the side table and leaned out of bed to check behind the bed. The bug thing, or rather, my bug thing, was still where it had curled up hours ago. I didn't know if it got impatient or uncomfortable, but if it did my orders apparently trumped those. Or maybe it was just asleep.

Though thinking about that, I realized I had a problem. How was I supposed to get it out of the hospital without anyone noticing? I couldn't count on Dad bringing me a bag big enough to hide it in, or that he wouldn't notice how full it seemed even if he did. Maybe I could get it to go out through the air vents, or drop it out the open window? Neither of those seemed like good ideas. People would probably hear something that big crawling through the vents, and I couldn't be sure no one outside would see me throw it out a window.

I stewed on that for a while, trying to think of some angle I could use to get my bug thing out unseen. And on that topic, I realized I needed a better name than "bug thing" or "monster" or the other half-dozen names I'd been referring to it as in my head. Despite my tension and worried thoughts, I found myself drifting off to sleep. I tried to resist at first, but my ideas soon became cyclical or nonsensical, and my already half-asleep mind quickly gave into the thought of leaving those problems for tomorrow morning.

Just as I slipped over the threshold into sleep, I was woken up again. I jerked awake as a loud noise sounded through the room. In that half-awake moment I registered strange shadows being cast across the room before the room was suddenly cast back into darkness. More importantly, I recognized that sound.

Panicked, I reached out for the connection I'd been stifling. Whatever had happened, I couldn't let it! Nightmare scenarios ran through my mind, of the thing being freed from my control or an entire pack of them appearing in the room. It wasn't big or dangerous, but in a hospital, there was no shortage of the week and feeble for it to prey on.

My panic soon gave way to confusion as I found nothing. No connection, no muffled and confusing input. It was gone.

I leaned over the side of the bed and looked in the crack behind it, grabbing the tablet and using its last flagging battery to turn it on and use the lit-up screen as a makeshift flashlight. Nothing. The thing wasn't there anymore.

Or it was completely unleashed from my control. I squashed that pessimism as I put the tablet back and laid down again. There wasn't anyway for it to get out of the room that I wouldn't have noticed. And with that burst of light, I was pretty sure that it had been that same cracked space that summoned it in the first place. Since there wasn't a second one in here, I felt safe assuming that the disturbance had been it returning to wherever it had come from. Well, relatively safe. Maybe sixty, seventy percent.

A doctor poked his head in, presumably summoned by the change in pulse they'd read from the wireless patch stuck to the back of my hand. I made excuses about a nightmare and he left, leaving me to try and sleep again.

So it vanished when I fell asleep. Useful for maintaining a cover, but not so great if someone knocked me out and I needed my minion to free me. At least that was one question off the list.

Still, as my heartrate slowed again, I noticed something I hadn't before. It was the same sort of strange perception I'd had of my connection to my bug thing, something I knew was there but wasn't quite tied to any of my senses. It was an energy, as best I could describe it, thrumming and tense.

It reminded me a bit of when I got sick and I had felt the tension in my muscles before I threw up, a sort of preparation foretelling what was to come. That could be a problem. I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to let the energy die away the same way I'd tried to stop myself from hurling. Of course, it hadn't worked then, but I had hope.

Slowly, I felt it begin to fade. No, recede. The energy wasn't weakening or going away, but it was withdrawing, settling back into a more stable position, less primed to go off. This really wasn't an ideal situation. A small bug thing that I might summon any time I got startled or woken up. Pretty low benefit for a power that could give me away to an alarm clock.

With that rather sarcastic thought, I let myself fall asleep.