The Other Way
Chapter Two
It didn't take Taylor long to regret her decision. Coincidentally, it also didn't take very long for Glory Girl to lift her up by the front of her costume and slam her into a brick wall.
"What did you say to me, you Nazi piece of crap?"
I am so dead! One hundred and ten percent dead! "I'm not a Nazi!" A wave of terror washed over her, drowning her in fear. There was only one logical thing she could do in this situation. She panicked. Her swarm attacked, and ten thousand bugs covered every inch of Glory Girl's perfect figure, stinging, biting, and clawing at ... air.
Right. Invulnerability. That was fair. Some people got bug powers, others became invincible.
She also had an aura power. Taylor remembered her discussing it on a talk show, and how it made her enemies nearly wet themselves on sight. Now, if only there was a talk show where capes discussed their greatest weaknesses, and how they could be exploited by insects.
Glory Girl gave the swarm a sneer and flew higher, carrying Taylor up over the surrounding rooftops. Her stomach lurched with vertigo. "You're not? So you beat and rob white people too, huh? An equal-opportunity creep."
God, if you're there, why do you hate me?
Was there a way to bypass her invulnerability? Even Alexandria had gotten hurt–once–so Glory Girl had to have some weakness. Maybe if she inhaled pepper spray, it would mess up her lungs? Hurt her from the inside?
Of course, at this point, defeating Glory Girl also meant a fifty foot drop. Mutually assured destruction was not the best way to resolve what was basically a misunderstanding with a superhero.
Taylor only had one choice left, her last, desperate resort.
"Armsmaster can vouch for me."
That, at least, gave her pause. "What?"
"I helped him take down Lung last night. Call him if you don't believe me."
"Really? Well, maybe I will. Don't go anywhere." Taylor dangled helplessly in the air as Glory Girl pulled her phone out of her utility belt. Utility belt. Need to get one. "Hello, this is Glory Girl. May I speak with Armsmaster? Yes, I can wait."
Taylor glanced down, wondering if she'd live long enough to overcome her fear of heights. Not at this rate. Was that woman still alive, lying half forgotten in the alleyway below them? Taylor planted a gnat on her upper lip to check. She was still breathing.
"He's not?" Glory Girl said into her phone. "What happened? When will he be back? Wednesday? Oh, well, never mind. Yeah, you too." She hung up. "Armsmaster's not in. Got anyone else?"
Sure, let me just pull out the list of character witnesses I've picked up as my last twenty-four hours as a cape! No, no, that wasn't the priority right now. "Look, I don't care how long you want to spend deciding if I'm one of the good guys or not, but that woman down there could be dying right now! Maybe calling an ambulance is more important than wasting your time with me!"
Taylor half expected Glory Girl to drop her after that, but she hesitated, and for a moment she looked worried. She set her down on a rooftop and began dialling. "Don't go anywhere. If I catch you running off, you'll regret it." She flew down to check on the victim.
Taylor looked around, feeling trapped. She had to get out, she had to get out now! Any second now Glory Girl was going to come back, beat the crap out of her, and drag her off to prison until either Dad bailed her out or Armsmaster got back from whatever vacation he was on. She sat down to make herself look like she was behaving herself, but sent her swarm out looking for an exit.
The fire escape was the obvious choice, but it led down to the alley where Glory Girl was. One of these days, she thought, a fire escape is going to be a literal escape, instead of just an ironic one. She managed to stick a bug on Glory Girl to keep track of her. The shorts she wore under her skirt was as slick as her skin, maybe a side effect of her invulnerability, but the skirt itself was not.
Taylor was looking around for a pipe she could shimmy down or a ledge from an adjacent building she could jump to when Glory Girl returned.
"Well, the paramedics are on their way," she said.
Taylor nodded, sure that anything she said would get her into more trouble.
"As for you, punch me."
"What?"
"You heard me. I want you to punch me as hard as you can."
Was this a trick? Of course it was. Taylor just couldn't figure out what it was for. She shook her head. "That will just give you an excuse to hit me back. Self defense or something."
Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Listen, kid, do you know who my mother is? Carol Dallon, and she's the best lawyer in the city when it comes to cape law. Right here there aren't any witnesses so it's my word against yours, which means I can do pretty much anything I want to you and get away with it, and what I want is for you to hit me."
Taylor stood up, took a deep breath, and started running. In the opposite direction. Glory Girl flew overhead and landed on the roof in front of her, blocking her path. With nothing else she could do, she drew her fist back and punched Glory Girl in her perfect jawline.
She inhaled sharply and cradled her hand to her chest. She would have been better off punching a brick wall. Had she broken something? Crap!
"Wow," Glory Girl said flatly. "That was incredibly bad. Martial artists around the world would weep if they saw that. You've never gotten in a fight in your life, have you?"
"Yes–I–have!" she said through gritted teeth. She would have sounded far less petulant if her eyes weren't watering.
"Okay, fine, but you didn't punch anyone, did you?"
Taylor didn't answer that question, and she didn't have to. She had tiny fists, frail arms, and a power set that didn't include superhuman strength.
"What I'm saying," Glory Girl went on, "is that I don't think you were the one who attacked her. If you were trying to beat her unconscious, she would have gotten bored and wandered off." Taylor glared at her. "That doesn't change the fact that I caught you robbing her when she was down, so I'm still going to have to take you in."
"I wasn't robbing her! I was looking for a phone so I could call for help!"
Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah. And I'm sure using your own phone never crossed your mind."
"I don't have one."
She blinked. "What do you mean, you don't have a phone? Everyone has a phone!" She sounded amused of all things.
Taylor gritted her teeth. "Well, not me." She didn't owe Glory Girl an explanation, and she didn't feel like telling her about how her mother died in a car accident because she couldn't wait just twenty minutes to make a phone call.
"I'm going to have to search you, just to be sure." Taylor didn't know how her Fourth Amendment Rights applied here, but like Glory Girl had said earlier, she could do anything she wanted and get away with it. It's like I'm still in school. "Hey kid, you got any pockets on this onesie?"
Taylor gritted her teeth and was tempted to keep silent just to spite her, but more than that she wanted this done. "In the armor on my back." Glory Girl wasn't precisely rough when she spun her around, but it felt like a semi truck was gently trying to nudge her in the right direction.
"Let's see. A stick, a flashlight, a tube of ... lipstick? Oh, pepper spray." Taylor couldn't help but feel violated as Glory Girl rifled through her stuff, like she had a right to. She felt angry ... but not afraid. Either Glory Girl's power had worn off, or she had stopped using it. Did it stop working when no one was looking at her? Regardless, Taylor's mind was clear. For all the good it did. "A bag of, what is this, chalk dust? Why did you even bring this?" She stood back, finished. "But no phone."
Taylor didn't say anything. If Glory Girl was going to realize that she was being an idiot, she could do it on her own.
She shook her head. "Well, this has been a colossal waste of time." She shot her a look, and Taylor was hit with a jolt of giddiness at fulfilling her childhood dream of doing capework with her favorite superhero. That ... was probably Glory Girl still using her power on her. "Hey, did you get there in time to see the thug that did this before he ran off?"
Taylor nodded.
Her aura turned mean again. "Well?" she said, annoyed. "What did he look like? Did he have any distinctive markings or tattoos that I can use to track him down?"
So her power had a nice and a mean setting. There was probably a better term for that, but still, interesting. Naughty and nice? No, that was even worse.
Taylor smiled behind her mask, and hoped that her smugness wouldn't sound in her voice. "I didn't see any, but he's right there," she said, pointing. "Not that building, but the one on the other side of it. He's on the second floor in a room with ... three other people. You'll recognize the attacker by his shaved head covered in welts."
Glory Girl's jaw dropped. Priceless. Taylor felt a bit guilty about the satisfaction she was getting out of this, but having someone with flight, strength, and invulnerability being impressed with her powers? That was pretty dang satisfying.
Taylor picked up her discarded equipment, favoring her good hand. "Either you stay here until the ambulance arrives and I'll go after him, or you go after him while I stay. I don't care which."
Glory Girl frowned, and for a moment a look passed across her face that was ... confusion? Recognition? Something in between? "You really don't." She nodded. "The ambulance should be here in a few minutes. Come by when it's done." Glory Girl smiled at her, and Taylor was reminded of a Glory Girl tee-shirt she had owned when she was younger. She flew away, and Taylor climbed down the fire escape.
She sat down on the floor in the alley and waited. The woman was breathing, albeit softly, and Taylor couldn't think of much to do. Besides keep her warm. She summoned her swarm and covered the woman in a living blanket, staying clear of any exposed skin to avoid infection. Was it gross? Yes, but Taylor couldn't think of anything else, besides maybe weave a spider silk blanket for her, and that could take hours.
So she waited as the minutes ticked by, wishing she had a watch. Utility belt, phone, watch, first aid kit ...
"You know, it's kind of weird that I don't know your name," she said aloud. People walked down the sidewalk in front of her, but it was dark enough so unless she made much noise no one would notice them. "That bugs me, but I guess that's part of being a cape. I save people I don't know, and the people I save don't know me. That makes sense, I guess. The whole reason I'm going out in spider silk tights is to run away from myself but still ... I don't know. I'm supposed to have a superhero name to give you, but I don't really have a cape identity yet, so I guess ... I guess I'm doing this as Taylor Hebert."
It felt ... good, saying that. Normally facing who she was made her feel small and weak, but this time it felt ... good. "I ... I don't matter to a lot of people," she said. "Thank you for letting me help you. It means a lot."
WWW
It wasn't long before the ambulance arrived, but it felt like it. When Taylor heard the sirens, she stepped out onto the sidewalk, waving her arms. It stopped, but the paramedic gave her a guarded look before stepping out.
"Are ... you a friend of Glory Girl's?" he asked, in a tone that suggested that he wouldn't have believed it.
Taylor didn't really believe it either. "She went on ahead and left me to keep an eye on things. A woman was attacked here. She's still breathing but she's in bad shape."
She led the paramedic into the alley, noting how he stayed away from her as though she had a bad smell. She dispersed her bug blanket so the man wouldn't think that she was doing strange things to helpless women in dark alleys, and soon he was more focused on the injured woman in front of him than the strange cape next to him.
He shined a flashlight in the woman's eyes, spoke to her, and began prodding her in what Taylor assumed was a thorough and professional manner before he and another paramedic loaded her onto a stretcher.
"Is she going to be okay?" she asked.
The first paramedic gave her a look that was more than a little patronizing. "Okay? This woman is going straight to Panacea. She could be a severed head and Panacea would have her in perfect shape by morning."
"Oh." Panacea was Glory Girl's sister. Glory Girl was the one who got into all the newspapers, talk shows, and shampoo commercials, but last year Panacea might have saved more lives than Eidolon just by visiting the hospital every day. Taylor didn't know if she could actually cure decapitation, but the woman would be fine. "This is hers, by the way," she added, handing over the purse.
"Oh. Thanks."
Why had that and that alone, out of everything she had done that night, merited an expression of gratitude? Oh well. Didn't matter. She went jogging down the street to catch up with Glory Girl.
She could have gone home at this point. Part of her wanted to slink off into the shadows, and she had done pretty much everything she had needed to. Glory Girl had found the attacker (after Taylor's bugs lined up in arrows to point her the way), and was just waiting for ... actually, what she was doing didn't really look like waiting.
She made her way into an apartment complex and climbed the stairs. Glory Girl was in the room with the broken door.
"I'm sure there's an easy way to do this," she could hear Glory Girl say, "but darn it, you skinhead numbskulls pick the hard way so often, I've forgotten what it is! So. Who wants to be the first to take a swan dive out the window?"
One of the other tenants in the complex, a shirtless middle aged man in his pajamas, stuck his head out his door to see what was going on.
"Cape business," Taylor explained, keeping her swarm buzzing around her and pooling at her feet. "Go back to bed."
Somehow that worked.
"Screw you, whore," came a voice from the room. "You haven't got the guts! Throw me out the window, and you'll catch me right before I hit the ground!"
"Happens all the time," one of the other men said. "Basic cape scare tactic."
"Well, looky here!" Glory Girl said. "A volunteer!"
Taylor stepped into the room, assuming that no one was going to try to shoot her. There were four men in the room, one of which was the attacker and the other three were ... what? Friends? There had been three people watching the whole attack, so maybe they came back here together. Between the splinters on the floor and the broken furniture, it seemed like Glory Girl had made herself at home. And had thrown a fridge at someone.
"Um," Taylor said, not sure what else to say.
Glory Girl turned, a man dangling from her grip, and flashed her a smile. "Hey, Bug Girl. Paramedics get here?"
Taylor nodded. "The cops are on their way?"
"I'm getting to that. The Empire Eighty-Eight has been going nuts since Lung went down, and I want to find out what their play is before they have the right to remain silent."
"Oh. Lung." If they were causing more trouble than normal now that Lung was out of the picture, then Taylor couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt. "Sorry about that."
"Hm?" Glory Girl asked.
"Oh crap!" one of the men blurted out. "You're the one who ... with his ..."
Oh. She shrugged.
"What?" the first man said, marked by a scalp full of bug bites. "What are you going on about?"
"You idiot!" Number Two said. "How'd you tick off the bug freak! You heard about what happened to Lung!"
Comprehension dawned on the them, and all four men grabbed at the crotches with both hands. One of them began sobbing uncontrollably.
"What happened to ..." Glory Girl started. "I mean, yeah! So talk! Or else ... things will happen."
"I don't know crap! It's my first day!"
"Lots of money in the docks. We were told to–"
"Recruitment! Kaiser said to–"
"No, please! I need my–"
The whole point of letting Armsmaster take credit for Lung was so that she wouldn't make too big of a splash before she figured out how to swim, but it looked like the Empire Eighty-Eight had uncovered the nitty gritty details about as quickly as the Undersiders had. The Azn Bad Boys probably knew too.
Well, if the cat was out of the bag, she might as well let it scare the bad guys. Taylor didn't trust her voice to come through over all the noise, so she held up a hand to silence them. It worked. Instantly. Weird. She pointed at one of them. He began to talk. And talk.
Taylor didn't understand most of what he was saying. There was a lot of context she didn't know about and he used some nicknames she was unfamiliar with for capes she might not even have heard of, but she got the gist of it.
On her first night out as a cape, Taylor Hebert had created a power vacuum.
On her second night, she had started a gang war.
Yay.
WWW
"You never did tell me your name," Glory Girl said after the police arrived. It seemed like most of the night had been spent waiting for the proper authorities.
"I haven't come up with one yet," Taylor admitted. Bug names all sounded creepy or pathetic. She was half convinced that all the capes with bug powers became rogues or villains because they couldn't think of any heroic names.
"Sorry about assuming you were a villain."
"Yeah, well, I guess I kind of look like one. I never did dye my costume," she said, feeling like she had gone to school in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Why was Glory Girl still walking with her? They were done, right? Why wasn't she flying home? "And I guess the situation did look bad from your perspective."
"I came by when I heard that there was a cape attacking random people," Glory Girl explained. "I'm guessing you just lost control of your powers or something, with you being so new at this."
That was a way out, but Taylor didn't take it. "They were complicit."
Glory Girl raised an eyebrow. "You sure? There were a lot of people who got stung, and they didn't really look the part of gangsters."
"They were complicit," she said, not budging.
Glory Girl fell silent for a moment, then said, "You know what you really need right now, as a new cape just starting out?"
"To paint my costume bright and cheerful colors?" If she wore a tie-dyed rainbow suit, no one would take her seriously, but at least the heroes wouldn't attack her on sight.
"Some coffee. Come on. I know a place that's open this late."
With no more warning than that, Glory Girl picked her up like she was a child, jumped into the air, and flew her–all the way to Boardwalk.
The midnight skyline of Brockton Bay was a million dollar view–probably. Taylor was too busy keeping her eyes shut and imagining that she wasn't a hundred feet up in the air to notice.
Why is she doing this to me? Did I offend her in some way? Is this some sort of cape hazing ritual to teach me my place before I get too uppity? Is she going to put me down somewhere horrible?
If by horrible, one meant the front entrance of Sagely Sal's, then yes, Glory Girl had flown her straight to hell. She set her down, and Taylor took a moment to find her feet as her knees stopped being jelly.
"I ... I can't drink coffee with my mask."
"We'll get it to go and have it on a rooftop." Oh great, more heights. Glory Girl put a hand on her shoulder and steered her into the coffee shop in a way that would have been friendly and inviting if that same hand couldn't crush coal into diamonds.
As soon as they came inside, people noticed. They gasped, they got out of her way, they took out their phones to take pictures. Glory Girl took this all in stride as though this had happened to her her whole life. It probably had.
"You're Glory Girl!" the cashier gasped. "Can ... I take your order?"
"I'll have a vanilla ginger latte to go," she said. She turned to Taylor. "And what are you getting?"
Just like that, all the attention in the room was turned to her. She felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. "Uh, I'll have the same!" she said, not wanting to take the time to look at the menu. Her voice sounded loud and clumsy in her own ears, and she could feel people looking at her, with their eyes!
Oh, please someone kill me now.
"Your order will be out in a few minutes," the cashier said. Under her breath, she added, "Oh-my-gosh-it's-Glory-Girl-she's-here-she's-here!"
After that, they waited. And waited. There weren't that many people there, because honestly, what kind of sick freak got coffee at twelve a.m.? But those who were there were all looking at them, wondering about them, talking about ... well, they were talking about Glory Girl exclusively.
"She is so hot! I mean, I'm not saying that I would actually cheat on you with her, but ...
"I didn't know capes came here! Think I could ask for her autograph?"
"That's ridiculous, Tom. I'd cheat on you with her. Oh crap, tell me she didn't hear me say that."
"Okay, I'm going to do this! Wish me luck. Three, two ... I can't do this."
Taylor felt her pulse pounding in her ears. She felt her swarm respond to her panic, converging on her location, congregating at the windows and squeezing through the cracks, she felt–
"Two vanilla ginger lattes to go," the cashier said. "I love you–I mean, have a good night."
Glory Girl took the order without noting (or probably even noticing) the faux pas, and they left.
WWW
Victoria set the bug girl down on the roof of the Central Bank and joined her to enjoy the view. She loved the way the city lights mirrored the stars in the night sky. When she had first gotten her powers, she would go out at night and spin around so fast until the lights above her and below her blended together into one.
She stopped after she had gotten so dizzy once she crashed through a building. Her mother had kept things quiet and covered damages, but that didn't stop Amy from giving her a hard time about it.
She glanced at the new cape, and saw her sitting stiff as a board, her styrofoam cup unopened. "You okay?"
"You didn't pay for this," the kid said.
"They didn't ask me to." She had given up on paying for little things early in her career. She had a bank account full of useless money, but everywhere she went people tried to pay her to wear their brands and eat out at their restaurants, if only for the celebrity endorsement.
Still, the way she said it, it kind of sounded accusatory. She used a bit of her power on the girl. Not a lot, just a bit. Subtlety was a foreign language to Victoria, but sometimes emotion manipulation worked better when the target didn't notice that her emotions were being manipulated.
If she shined too low, her power did next to nothing at all, but even when she shined brighter, she didn't always know how her power would push people. It left others in awe of her, but that meant something different for everyone she met. People who had a reason to fear her grew terrified, and others began to admire her, but even that was too simple.
People responded to fear in different ways. It would have been nice if her power just made her enemies surrender, but some people ran away when scared, others grew grew stubborn, and others got angry. Admiration was the same. Some grew shy and ran away, others became jealous and aggressive, and some people had started stalking her. Dean–Gallant–had powers that let him see people's emotions, but Victoria felt like he was groping around in the dark when she used hers.
Still, if she was going to have awesome powers and hardly ever use them, she might as well be Amy.
The bug girl finally took off her mask and sipped at her latte. Her mouth was too wide and her lips too thin to be considered objectively pretty, but if you were wearing a mask, you didn't need to be pretty, you just needed to project an air of confidence. The girl couldn't do that either. Her eyes were wide and staring at nothing, and her jaw was stiff giving her face an expression that said, I really wish I weren't here right now.
"Hey, you're not afraid of heights, are you?"
"No," she said, too firmly for it to be true.
Well, darn it. Couldn't she have mentioned that, like, ten minutes ago? "If this is a problem, we can go somewhere else."
"No, I'm fine." Again, too firmly to be true, but if she didn't want Victoria to push her, then Victoria wasn't going to push her. "So, what happened with Lung? I couldn't get anything out of those Empire thugs, but they spilled their guts to you like their lives depended on it."
She looked down, flinched at the vertigo hit her, and then grabbed at the edge of the roof to steady herself.
"Here, grab onto my cape if you're feeling nervous." Victoria tossed her cape around the girl's shoulders like she always did with Amy when they hung out on rooftops. Of course, in Amy's case it was more like sharing a blanked than offering a safety cord, but either way, capes weren't just for show.
"Um, it's kind of embarrassing," she said. "I may have kind of made Lung's ... manparts fall off."
Victoria blinked. "No. You didn't. That's not ... you did that?"
Amy had been called in for an emergency that morning well before sunrise. When Victoria asked her what it had been about, she had said, "Physician-patient confidentiality prevents me from telling you that Lung has been castrated. So I won't."
"I didn't mean too! It was an accident!"
Victoria considered that. "You accidentally castrated one of the scariest freaks in Brockton Bay. How?"
She looked away. "It's kind of embarrassing."
Victoria rolled her eyes. "I promise I won't tell anyone." Besides Amy, but she told Amy everything.
"Well, I got in a fight with him, so I sent my bugs after him. That just made him angry, and he started growing armored plates over his body. So I had my bugs attack him in places he wasn't likely to be armored."
"You mean his dick." She thought of a joke about Lung's dick not being hard, but it was beneath her.
She shrugged. "That just made him angrier."
"I'll bet."
"So I stung him in the eyes and hit him with pepper spray. That made him blind, but ..."
"Even angrier."
She nodded. "Poison doesn't work well on people with enhanced healing, but Armsmaster arrived and was able to capture and tranquilize him, and I guess after that Lung's healing stopped."
"And his dick fell off." Victoria couldn't help herself. She started laughing. The fact that the bug girl had said everything in a tone of apologetic seriousness only made it funnier.
"It's not funny!"
She laughed harder. "Yes it is." She took a breath. "And now you're coming after the Empire Eighty-Eight."
She shrugged.
"If you ever catch the Kaiser, you should totally circumcise him."
She shook her head frantically. "I'm not doing that. I do not want a reputation as the cape who mutilates genitalia."
"It would still be hilarious."
She shook her head, but didn't say anything.
"So, new cape," she said. "Are you thinking about joining the Wards?"
She shook her head. It seemed like more of a I don't want to join no than a I haven't thought about it yet no.
"Why not?"
She shook her head again.
Succinctly put. Victoria considered using her power on her again, but while admiration was great at getting people to want to ask her for her autograph, it was a lot worse at getting people to open up. She took a shot in the dark, turned off her power entirely, and put an arm around the girl.
She stiffened at first, then relaxed. For a while, neither said anything. Victoria liked to fill the quiet with conversation, even if it meant talking about nothing at all. Amy prefered long awkward silences, and somehow managed to make them not awkward at all.
"I'm not good with people," the bug girl said at last. "I ... I don't think I'd be much good on a team."
Victoria considered that for a moment. Okay, what's the gentlest, most diplomatic way to tell her that's bull crap? Sure, the kid had made a bad first impression, but apparently no one had told her that a black and grey costume with glowing yellow eyes looked creepy.
The girl was wasted as a solo operative. Maybe she couldn't take on Lung on her own, but no one in the city was stupid enough to try. Just with her ability to sense and track people, she'd be an asset to any team she was on without ever going into danger. Without a meat shield to hide behind or someone with experience to tell her what fights to avoid, she'd be dead in a week.
Really, Dean would have an easier time convincing her that Victoria would. Actually ...
"You know what? Why don't you try it out? Nothing permanent, just an afternoon."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
Victoria pulled a pen out of her utility belt and wrote a seven digit number on a napkin.
"You're giving me your phone number?"
"No, I'm giving you my boyfriend's phone number, because I'm confident like that. Gallant. He's been in the Wards for longer than anyone, so he knows who does and doesn't work well on the team. Do a ride along with him, find out what the Wards program is like. If you like it, you can join the team. If you don't, then you'll know you're not missing out."
The bug girl took the napkin, looked at it, and stuck it in one of her armor compartments. "Thanks," she said, but her voice sounded grudging, if not sarcastic.
That stung a bit. Yeah, well screw you too. Sure, Victoria had made a few snap judgements when she had seen the kid clutching a purse while standing over the body in the alley, but Bug Girl wasn't doing herself any favors right now. Victoria wasn't even sure the Wards would want her on the team. A swarm of insects didn't have a heroic feel to them, and from what Dean had been telling her, the last thing they needed was yet another edgy loner.
Still, the kid needed a team, even if she wasn't willing to admit it, and the New Wave wasn't looking for new recruits. "Worse case scenario," she said, "Gallant will be able to help you come up with a cape name that doesn't suck."
WWW
A/n And there's chapter two. I think that Taylor and Glory Girl could have become friends if they had met under the right circumstances, but those circumstances would not involve Glory Girl bullying Taylor or Taylor embarrassing Glory Girl.
Honestly, the hardest thing about writing someone with thirty freaking arcs of character development is writing how they were at the beginning instead of at the end. The main reason she grew so much closer to the Undersiders in a few months than to the Chicago Wards in two years is because she was with the Undersiders during a point in her life when she most needed people, and even if she's not going to join them in this story, she's still at the same point. She's standoffish, insecure, and antisocial, while Glory Girl is arrogant, impulsive, and naive. Hopefully I was able to write them true to character without looking like I was bashing them. One of Wildbow's greatest skills as a writer is to invent likable, flawed characters, and have them meet in circumstances where they would logically hate each other.
On a side note, Worm uses the term taser for the melee version, so I'm guessing the difference between stun guns and tasers is important only to the people who sell them.
Anyway, thanks for the reviews!