Hatching 1.4

"Hey, Earth to Taylor."

I jerked myself out of my thoughts and turned back to Dad. "What? Yeah?"

He frowned and leaned across the booth table. "Are you doing alright? You seem kind of spacey."

It wasn't hard to connect the dots of his concern. "Yeah, I'm fine. I wasn't thinking about… that. My brain just went off on a tangent."

He didn't look like he entirely believed me, but he didn't press the issue. I really wouldn't have blamed him if he had. I had basically been avoiding him since getting home. It wasn't so much that I wanted to avoid him than that I had more important things to do than talk with him… Yeah, that wasn't much better.

Sure, I felt bad about it, but I couldn't entirely bring myself to regret it. My power may have been weak, frustrating, and confusing but it was still a power, and that was pretty cool. I'd spent the past few days either shopping for supplies or practicing with my beetleings, as I'd taken to calling them.

After the first day of testing how they worked, I'd moved on to basic tactics and strategies. I probably didn't need to actually have them summoned for most of it, but it helped give me an idea of how well they could work in the field. I hadn't gotten to actually test them in a fight yet, given that I wasn't willing to attack them myself or have the fight each other, but I still held to my initial idea that they weren't great at fighting.

It made sense once I'd gotten the chance to see them in action that first day. Their small size and skill at breaking things painted an image of stealthy saboteurs rather than violent brawlers. At least I was pretty sure they were stealthy. I hadn't wanted to risk having them sneak by other people so I'd tried to have them start at a particular point, then sneak past me to a goal.

That plan had promptly fallen through when I was trying to spot them and accidentally leaned too much into my connection to them. After spending a minute picking myself off the ground from the burst of mental noise, I'd realized I had been able to feel where they were through the connection.

Further testing had confirmed that. When I embraced the connection, I could feel where they were in relation to me in the same way I could tell where my hand was even if my eyes were closed. It had been a useful trick to learn, even if it was annoying that my power seemed to show it off specifically to screw up something else I was trying.

I realized I'd been getting distracted again and shook myself out of it. I belatedly realized Dad was talking and had been for a while, trying to fill the empty space of conversation with idle talk about the Docks and the news from the mayor about the ferry. This I did feel bad about. He'd tried to reach out and take me out to dinner before I had to go back to school, and I was still ignoring him.

I forced myself to reply and take a bite of my burger. Or at least my half of the burger. As with all things Fugly Bob's sold, a burger was big enough and piled with enough cheese, sauce, and toppings that just looking at it could fulfill your caloric needs for the next week. I was fairly certain I could feel my arteries clogging with every bite, but it was the kind of greasy, fatty comfort food I needed with the prospect of school tomorrow looming over me.

I took another bite and looked across the restaurant when someone caught my eye. A few tables away, a girl sat at a table with her family having her own dinner. She didn't stand out to look at, but what had caught my attention was that I'd seen her looking at me.

She looked familiar, that kind of familiarity when you see someone in the hall or classes all the time but never actually met them. A knot of dread twisted in my gut. I did recognize her. She was one of the girls that followed the Trio around. Not one of their immediate cronies that took part in their "pranks" but one of the crowd that liked to follow them around to feel cool by association. What was her name, something with an A? Alyssa? Amanda?

The fear grew as I kept staring at her. There was no way she didn't recognize me, no way she didn't know what happened two weeks ago. She might have even been there as part of the studio audience from hell. I kept staring at her, my worries growing worse as I dwelled on them. She'd probably pass on to the Trio that she'd seen me here, eager to earn favor with some morsel of information they could use to torment me.

At best I could look forward to a barrage of fat jokes for the next few weeks, completely ignoring the fact that all of them probably ate here too. More likely they'd make something up about how I had to be bulimic to eat here and still stay bone thin. Hell, they'd probably say I ate here because I liked throwing up. If they were really nasty, they'd go beyond rumors and bring it to the school counselor with fake concerns about my health and I'd be in for a bunch of obnoxious counselor meetings and pamphlets. Again.

I took a moment to morn the time before Emma had turned against me, when I wouldn't have been able to come up with such torments just by wondering what I was in for the next day.

As I was thinking, the girl looked over at me again. She paused when she saw me looking at her, looking a bit surprised. We both sat there for a moment, holding each other's gazes across the room. I wondered what was going through her head, if there was even an ounce of guilt in there.

Then she smiled at me, gave me a little finger wave, and turned back to her family. In that instant I felt like I was back at Winslow, with smug grins and mocking comments needling me from every passerby.

The fear in my gut abruptly condensed into anger. No. No. I was a victim at school, but I would not let them get to me outside of it. The thought didn't abate as my hand clenched into a fist under the table, Dad's conversation barely a murmur in my awareness anymore.

I could imagine going back to school tomorrow. Two weeks later, whatever grace period I might have gotten from coming out of that locker covered in filth would be gone by now, even if I hadn't been there to enjoy it. It would be back to normal when I showed up tomorrow. The teasing, the thefts, the assorted humiliations. It would be like nothing had happened.

I'd gotten powers over that. The thought came to me in a weird detached clarity. Even if I ignored the horror and disgustingness through some herculean feat of will, my life had been irrevocably changed by that day. In some way that idea felt worse than the torments themselves would. For something like that to happen, for everything to change, and the ones responsible still carry on like nothing was different?

I could almost feel the exact moment when the anger twisted into determination. No. I wouldn't let that happen. Going back to Winslow as the same person I had been even two weeks ago wasn't an option. Maybe I couldn't change things there, but school wasn't my entire life.

I was a victim at school, but not outside of it. I had one night left before going back and a power itching to be used for something other than practice. I wasn't going to waste them.

It was 11:00 by the time I was certain Dad was asleep, but I waited another half an hour before crawling out of bed and getting ready to go out. By then I'd been lying awake for a good hour and a half, listening to any hints that might tell me if Dad was still up. Even after all that waiting, I felt a niggle of fear that he might suddenly be awake as I went to my closet and retrieved the things I'd stashed at the back.

My costume was… well, it would have been easier to list the things it wasn't. Good, for one. It was mainly just a bunch of cheap and sturdy clothes I'd chosen mainly for their generic appearances. A dark grey hoodie with a black t-shirt to wear under it, dark jeans that had taken forever to find in my size without "fashionable" rips, and the work boots formed most of it. I'd managed to snag a bandanna to tie over my lower face as an impromptu mask, plus a set of old gloves for my hands. I wasn't sure if the Protectorate would sweep for my prints to try and find out my identity, but it was better safe than sorry.

The only part of my costume that had more detail put into it was the goggles. I'd snagged a set of yellow-lensed goggles from a sports store at a decent price, the kind people used when they went diving in caves. They'd do to help obscure the upper part of my face, but they had another purpose. One of the many painful lessons I'd taken away from the Trio was that glasses were fragile, and I hardly imagined being a vigilante hero would be a gentle job. So I'd popped the lenses out of an old pair of mine and spent an hour on Friday to glue them inside the goggle's frames. They didn't fit perfectly, so they sat suspended in glue I'd had to pile up in the goggles frame before putting them in place. The result was something that both obscured part of my face and let me see, ideally while hiding the fact that I needed glasses in the first place.

The result wasn't great, but with the bandana and goggles hiding my face and my hair tucked into the hood, it did a decent job at hiding my identity. I'd wavered a bit on the hair thing before deciding to keep it out of sight. Given my general figure of thin and flat in all the areas I didn't want to be, my hair was really the only part of myself I considered attractive. Still, between being able to assert some fragment of body positivity and not getting recognized as the thin girl with long curly hair, I chose the option that wouldn't lead to me getting tracked down and murdered.

I had plans for the costume, though none that were really feasible in the short term. Some form of protection would be nice, but body armor I wasn't exactly something I could buy at the supermarket. Maybe I could order some online, but that was just begging someone to look into why I needed it.

I'd considered trying to harvest the exoskeleton from one of my beetleings to repurpose as armor, but had decided against it for a couple of reasons. The first was that I wasn't even sure if I could do that. They vanished entirely if I fell asleep or they went out of my range, so I couldn't be certain they wouldn't do the same if they died from, say, having someone rip their external skeleton off their body. The other was that it just felt weird. They did anything I asked without question, so making them submit themselves to be slaughtered and collected for parts felt like abusing that relationship.

Since armor was out of the question, barring some very convenient finds in the Trainyard, I'd focused my planning more on camouflage. It fit my general plan as a cape better anyways, since I wanted to work from behind the scenes while my beetleings did the work. I'd seen some nature documentaries about how camouflage worked by breaking up a silhouette, so I'd gotten a few different types of dye in various dark blues and greys to use in blotches. As a spur of the moment thing I'd also grabbed a container of the dark red with ideas about dying some sort of insignia into the chest of the hoodie. I would have done that already, but with Dad around it wasn't something I could do in a quick timeframe without him noticing or staining my own hands. So I was going out undyed and hoping for the best.

Costume donned, such as it was, I went to the accessories. A cheap fanny pack fit around my stomach, of a generic color that blended in pretty well with the hoodie itself. It didn't have much in it, just a pad of paper, some bandages pillaged from the house's first aid kit, and a compact but bright flashlight. There was a small bag of chalk dust too, another impulse buy when I imagined fighting invisible enemies.

A more recent addition was a tube of pepper spray Dad had pressed into my hands after dinner. He'd told he it was because he noticed me going out more and wanted me to be safe, but the timing and the way he did it made it pretty clear it was more as a backup measure in case someone tried something like the locker again. I found the gesture oddly heartwarming. What did it say that the most direct support I'd gotten from him over the past few days was his implicit permission to attack my classmates if they gave me trouble?

I stifled those thoughts as I stuffed it in the bag with the rest of my things. Now was not the time to be thinking about that sort of stuff. Right now was time to be a cape, focus on what I could do. Sabotage gangs, clean up the streets, protect people. I did my best to ignore the part of my mind that doubted I could do any of those things. Cape and civilian problems separate, that was the thing to focus on.

It was with a mix off anticipation and trepidation that I slipped out the back door and started walking towards downtown. I'd thought about this moment plenty over the last few days, trying to imagine what it would be like the first time I set out in costume with the intent to be a hero. The nervousness and fear I'd imagined, though not quite as sharply as I was actually feeling them in the moment. The way my hot breath made the bandanna stuffy was something I hadn't anticipated, but I resolved to ignore it, just like I was doing my best to ignore my anxieties about how ridiculous or suspicious I might look to someone who saw me.

It wasn't long before I crossed out of the neighborhoods and into the areas where the gangsters and crack whores lived. The boundary was almost immediately, shifting into dingy apartment buildings and warehouses where it had been townhouses and picket fences just a block or two ago. It was a bit depressing how short the commute was.

Part of my research had been looking into which gangs operated where. I wanted to avoid the E88, because they had a lot of capes and an encounter with the gang had a higher chance of involving one of their powered members. I wanted to avoid the ABB because even though they had only two capes, I was as good as dead if I happened to run into either of them. So I'd settled on hitting the Merchant's territory, at the border between the Docks and downtown. They had more capes than the ABB, but none of them were particularly powerful, so I was reasonably certain I could get out alright even if I ran into one of them.

I wasn't quite sure how long I walked, ducking through alleys and skirting streetlights to avoid drunken wanderers, streetside whores, and other passerby. Maybe an hour, maybe more or less? I made a mental note to get a watch for the future.

As I kept walking and avoiding being seen, I started paying more attention to the passerby who clearly weren't drunks or whores. I was 90% sure they were members of the Merchants just going by the fact that they were bold enough to walk around alone at night. I contemplated just piling one with five beetleings, but sighed and gave up on the idea almost immediately. I doubted the police or the Protectorate would be interested enough to come pick up a single subdued criminal, much less one I couldn't be certain was a criminal in the first place and had nothing to accuse him of.

It was a few more minutes before the noise caught my attention from one street over. I ducked through an alley and peered around the corner of a building. Across the street and a few buildings down I could see a small warehouse with its shutter door pulled up, a battered pick-up parked haphazardly in front of it so it sat half on the curb and half in the street in front of that. It was from inside the warehouse that I could hear the sounds, assorted yelling I couldn't quite make out and the occasional crash of breaking glass.

There was no doubt about it, there was something going on in that warehouse. The real question was whether I was going to do something about it. I weighed the question for about half a second before deciding. Yes, I was. Either they were doing something illegal in there or they were planning to, and I'd come out tonight to stop something just like this, even if my general fear said otherwise.

The fact that they had a truck didn't hurt things either. If it had been just a bunch of gangsters hanging out I couldn't have really done anything short of trying to attack them with my beetleings or just calling the police. I couldn't imagine any way the former would go well, and the latter was something anyone could do. Maybe just calling the cops on them wouldn't be such a bad idea, but it would pretty much negate the purpose of putting on a costume and trying to fight crime myself. But with a car? I might not be able to do much to them, but my beetleings could ruin their getaway and make it easier for the cops to get them. Sure, it was still sort of relying on someone else to get them for me, but at least this way I could contribute.

Forcing down my nerves, I crept closer. I kept up the same nervous movement as I had before, keeping out of the light and ducking into alleys where I could. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered. As I ducked into the alley directly across from the open warehouse door, I got a good look at what was happening inside.

There were a good half dozen people clustered in the warehouse, too busy shouting, jeering, and laughing at each other to bother looking outside. The air around them was heavy with smoke, some from cigarettes and some from fatter blunts. The source of the breaking glass was clear too, as there wasn't a single one of them without a beer in hand, with more bottles both empty and full littering the floor. As I watched, one of the guys pulled off his shirt and started doing some drunken approximation of flirtatious dancing to the jeers and mockery of his fellows.

I grimaced in distaste under my bandanna. Yeah, these were definitely Merchants. But more important than the drunken debauchery and the gangsters themselves was what lay behind them. Piled on a cheap plastic table and some wooden crates were several piles of white powder crammed into plastic bags. I might not have been able to tell what kind of drugs they were exactly, but even an idiot would know that they were definitely drugs. More importantly, there were more drugs than it looked like a half dozen people could carry, but rather an amount that would require, say, a truck to easily transport.

My face split into a grin. Even if they managed to get away before cops showed, they'd have to leave some behind. Not a major victory, but getting some drugs off the street would be a good start.

I reached for the energy, then hesitated. Drunk and high as they were, my power was pretty bright and loud when I activated it. Maybe better to do it farther from them. I moved farther back into the alley and ducked behind a dumpster to summon my beetleings.

It had taken the better part of two days of practice for me to figure out how to make this work. As best I could tell, my power needed a particular cause to activate. So simply trying to summon a beetleing for the sake of it wouldn't work, but trying to summon them to do something would, whether that something was practice or demolition.

I focused on the truck and my desire to break it down, then pulled on the energy. The air split and cracked around me, and in a matter of seconds I had five fresh beetleings ready to go. Or at least I assumed they were fresh. I'd tried a couple different things to try and figure out if I summoned the same ones each time or if I created new ones with each summoning, and I still wasn't sure. They couldn't take things with them when they vanished, and when I marked one with paint none had been painted when I summoned them later, but it was possible they simply got reabsorbed by my power and had their bodies made anew each time. The only way I could think of to know for sure would be to ask them, but I'd established pretty well by now that asking them about anything was a fool's errand.

The five looked up at me, quietly clicking their mandibles together. With their small size and shiny red eyes, they were almost cute in a weird bug-toddler sort of way. I wondered if maybe I was projecting a bit. A year and a half without friends had probably lowered my standards when it came to accepting companionship in any form.

"Go break down the truck across the street. Stay out of sight if you can and return to me once you're done." I hesitated, thinking if there was anything else to add to the instructions. The beetleings waited patiently, which was nice to note. They usually went right for a task once given orders, but apparently they could tell if the orders weren't finished.

"If you do get spotted, try to subdue the gangsters." As far as I considered it, this was the best way to cover my bases. If they didn't get spotted, no problem. If they did, I'd get to know whether they were better or worse than a bunch of drunken gangsters at fighting.

Once I was done talking, they turned and scurried towards the warehouse. I followed, stopping to crouch at the mouth of the alley at watch them go. The five of them moved in silent coordination, keeping low to the ground and crawling rapidly on all fours across the street. They kept the truck between them and the gangsters, staying out of sight until they got to the vehicle.

Over the past few days, I had gotten quite a bit of practice in with them to sabotage things. Part of that had involved trying to get them to do it slowly so I could learn to do it myself, but that had quickly proven impossible as I figured out how they did it. To put it simply, they were almost literally made to break things. The shape of their claws could be used to pry open seams and turn screws, while the inflexible carapace of their mandibles and hands let them grab and turn pieces with a strength I'd have to use plyers for. Even their tongues had a use, long, thin, and stiff enough to jab into small openings and dislodge internal pieces enough for them to capitalize on a shift and tear the whole thing apart.

Another thing I'd learned was that what they broke had a tendency to stay broken. They were none to gentle with their disassembly, and almost every time pieces got broken, bent, or warped in a way that made it impossible to fix without replacing the part.

But that had all been with small things, scavenged doorknobs and hinges. I'd never set them on anything as large or complex as a car. So it was with some interest that I watched them set to work.

As soon as they got to it, three of them teamed up to form a stack and reach the door handle. Apparently the Merchants didn't think to lock their car, because they managed to pull the door open and two slipped inside. A second later the hood popped up an inch as they apparently found the hood release. The third from the stack quickly crawled up the tire and onto the front bumper, lifting the hood enough to squeeze under into the engine before letting it drop down behind it.

While those three did that, the fourth crawled directly under the car before hauling itself up into the underside. The fifth simple went right for a tire, gnawing and clawing at it until it tore a hole in the rubber the size of my palm.

My interest quickly turned to glee as they worked. I couldn't tell exactly what was happening from a distance, but from the number of pieces falling out of the underside and the two demolished tires, it was quite a bit. I cast a glance at the Merchants to see if they noticed anything, but they seemed pretty distracted by one of their number holding up a bag of the drugs. Maybe they weren't supposed to sample their wares, maybe they'd developed a sudden objection to drugs, but I didn't much care. So long as they were distracted and let by beetleings work in peace, things were fine.

Naturally, that's when things stopped being fine. One of them turned away from the group and started walking towards the car, yelling something over his shoulder. My heart jumped into my throat. No, no, no! The car was definitely inoperable by now, but if he spotted the beetleings he'd warn the group, and if my minions weren't strong enough to provide a good distraction, they'd have a good enough head start to get away before the police had a chance to do.

At that moment, I had a terrible realization. I couldn't call the police. I didn't have a phone! I wanted to slam my head against a wall in frustration. Of course! First night out, and I already screwed up entirely. Even if this had worked perfectly, I couldn't have done anything. I felt a bitter wave of self-directed anger that made my pulse pick up. I couldn't even blame my power for it, this was a 100% Taylor screw-up. Some superhero I was.

At least my beetleings didn't same to be suffering from similar terrible realizations. They'd stopped working as soon as the guy had turned away from the group, going into hiding immediately. From my perspective I could see one of them huddled behind a tire, but I couldn't see any sign of the other four. I reached out through their connection to feel where they were, finding them hiding inside the paneling and bowels of the car.

The guy reached the car and pulled open the passenger door before rummaging around for something by the seat. I felt my spirit lift a bit. Maybe things would work out after all.

Then the hinges came apart and the door fell off of the car, along with some of the outer paneling and about a dozen parts from the underside. I didn't know what he saw from his perspective, but from the way he started screaming, I knew it wasn't good.

An instant later one of the beetleings threw itself out of the side of the truck at him. It rammed into his leg with as much force as it could muster, which didn't seem to be much, but it quickly followed by by biting and clawing at his shin.

The guy staggered back, swearing and screaming bloody murder, the beetleing staying hot on his heels. The rest of the group broke apart from their revelry, degenerating into cursing and shouting as they saw what was happening. A few pulled knives from their pockets and started moving to help the Merchant under attack.

In that next moment after he started moving away from the truck, the rest of the beetleings made their move. They bolted out from under it, crawled out of the engine, all moving towards the one already being attacked. One leapt up and grabbed his jeans, trying to climb up his body, while another joined the first at harrying his legs.

The guy screamed and beat at them with his hands, but between their hard shells and the way he didn't want to reach down far enough to hit them, it didn't do much. The other Merchants that had been coming to help him had backed off by now, continuing their contributions to the broad tapestry of profanity as they watched in shock and horror, seemingly unwilling to get close to some unknown monsters that were attacking their buddy. I actually felt much the same way. They seemed much more aggressive than I thought they'd be.

The guy tried to grab the one that was by now up to his stomach and shove it away from him, while also trying to kick the ones at his feet. That proved to be a mistake. When his leg was up from a kick and he was off balance, the two on the ground made a vicious attack on his other ankle. He lost his balance and toppled to the ground with a scream that ended in a gasp as he struck the concrete floor.

In an instant all three were on him, crawling on his torso in a crowd of gnashing mandibles and scraping claws. From what I could tell they didn't seem to be doing much damage, nothing more than shallow scrapes and punctures, but from the way the guy was screaming it was clear he was terrified. One of the gangsters seemed to shake himself out of his shock at the sight of one of their own going down, stepping forward towards them with a knife in hand. Distracted as he was, he didn't notice the other two make their move. I was distracted myself, though more out of growing appreciation for my beetleings surprising combat capabilities than concern for the guy, but I only caught a glimpse of them and a glint of metal before they struck.

The guy who had been moving to help howled in pain as a tire iron crashed into his ankle. As he lifted his foot to try and relieve himself of the pain, the length of pipe carried by the other beetleing struck him in the side of the knee. He crumpled, barely managing to catch himself with his hands. That didn't help him, because the pipe came back around and hit him in the elbow, sending his arm splaying across the floor and making him collapse onto his shoulder.

He tried to rise but the other one moved, tire iron raised overhead to crack down on his skull.

My previously growing pride in my beetleings immediately gave way to fear. Sure, none of what they were doing already was gentle, but that could actually kill him! Even if he was a major criminal, he didn't deserve to be brained in a warehouse.

My mouth was already open to shout for them to stop when it shifted its grip and brought it down on his jaw instead. There was a loud crack and he started writhing and screaming. It sounded painful, but not lethal.

I sagged against the alley wall a bit, overwhelmed at what had nearly happened. I was filled with shame and regret. I should have practiced more, I should have told them to run instead of fighting, I should have done anything but have my minions attack some random criminals while having no idea what their capabilities were. A man had nearly died tonight, all because I was too hasty and impatient to try and be a hero.

I wanted to laugh at myself. Yeah, a hero. Sure, that's definitely the word they'd use to describe me if I mauled a half dozen people with an untested power. I looked up to check on how the fight was going. They had moved on from the two men now laying moaning and whimpering on the floor. One of the remaining gangsters had a baseball bat and was managing to fend them off with it, but the five were circling the gangsters, looking for an opening.

I couldn't bring myself to be interested in the fight anymore. I'd sabotaged their car, broken up their meeting. Technically, I'd done everything I set out to do. Fighting had seemed like a good idea for practice at the time, but now it just seemed gratuitous, more dangerous than it was worth. I considered just leaving, just letting the beetleings stay here until I got too far away and they vanished.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by a thunderous bang. At almost the same time there was another sound, one I was much more familiar with. The sound of my power activating. I reached for my connections in a panic, trying to find the new beetleing, wondering why it had activated. But there were no more connections than I'd expected. Actually, there were less.

Afraid now, I looked to the gangsters to see one of them brandishing a gun against four beetleings. He let of another shot as one tried to lunge. The beetleing in motion exploded apart into quickly sealing lines of light in the air, like the reserve of when they appeared. I felt the connection break as the beetleing died this time now that I was paying attention.

I was torn between fear and relief. This wasn't great, but now that I knew they could protect themselves from the beetleings I could just leave without worrying that they'd create a murder scene as soon as they were out of sight. I felt kind of shitty that this was how I was going to end my first night out as a hero, but I supposed it could be worse. I'd broken a gangster's car, ruined their party, and probably drawn the police with the gunshots. Even if I hadn't gotten them arrested, it was still a small win.

"Hey!" One of the remaining gangsters yelled. I looked up, somewhat curious at the first thing I'd heard them say that wasn't a curse or similar vulgarity. "Who's that over there?!"

The shouting guy pointed and the others looked where he was pointing. He was pointing out of the warehouse and across the street. Directly at me.

Oh fuck.