CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This one is still another idea articulated around the same three points.

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This story doesn't start like your usual Taylor Hebert story, because she doesn't go to school at Winslow.

No: she already outstripped all records in primary schooling, and despite the will of her teachers to "rein her in" to "properly socialize with her peers" (who were at that time indoctrinated in the various facets of political correctness, instead of learning basic mathematics), she was supported by her loving parents. As such, she was home-schooled until her mother couldn't continue, her daughter's level in sciences outstripping hers.

Thankfully, it was right as she was finishing up high school level in other domains, and she was able to get the corresponding diploma easily enough. While her mom returned to her teaching job, Taylor entered college while being only thirteen – with enough grants that she didn't have to pay for much. With teachers specializing in their fields, she was able to soar even higher and quicker, only to discover the glaring holes in the theories underneath her chosen specialty: physics.

She was only sixteen when she passed her Ph.D. thesis on astrophysics, with an explanation about gravity that defied the established guidelines. And not only that, she produced a prototype as support, during her presentation. Needless to say, many specialists were quite shocked to see her home-made device float by itself in the air right beside her. Multiple cries of "Tinker" filled the room – in which such an accusation would be tantamount to saying that she cheated.

The PRT was called, and their various testing methods revealed nothing. Nothing parahuman, that is: they concluded conclusively that Taylor Hebert was not a parahuman, and would probably never be, since she lacked the brain structures parahumans had.

Being able to lift large masses easily, variable gravitational fields were, of course, something that could be of immediate and immense interest for the industry, and the military. Taylor had thought about having a patent, and did file for one, but the government came nonetheless and seized her research while she was being tested at the PRT. And they also appropriated her patent and prototype, under the guise of "national security". She couldn't pursue her initial research thrust, and didn't have the diploma to prove what she had done.

Without it, and without the means to repeat her presentation, Taylor grew quite disgusted. Thankfully, her research sponsor had enough money to keep her employed, and she aimed her next research attempts at something she had discovered when playing with gravity: the fact that everything in space was anchored to reality, within the threshold of the measurable units… with the missing matter and energy not being so. That meant that the so-called "dark" matter and energy was everywhere, only difficult to access because they were between the "cells" our material universe was split into – a place that she dubbed "subspace".

As soon as she made that discovery, she destroyed all the notes she had (notes that were held on a computer disconnected from the international network) and removed all proofs of such. But she kept two prototype items: one was able to generate a portal into an array of subspace that acted as a dimensional hideaway, like Toybox's creations (although it was one with its own light, power, air, and water, all generated by the same engine). The other was a detector of such things, because, in the course of her research, she had found out that there were many places where such portals were present, and active. And among those, the most numerous type was the small ones in the head of some people.

It bore some study, of course, but she was interrupted when one of those portal-imbued person suddenly became doubly imbued. It was the end of June, and year results had been published, and a certain someone wasn't particularly happy about her grades. And she triggered. And she became a bomb Tinker.

It has to be said, right now, that university life wasn't devoid of their own sets of bullies. Much like high school, in fact, since the place was mainly filled with people from there, only slowly adapting their worldview to the larger world. Natural jealousy was a thing, and people rallied under the banner of her cheating to get a prestigious distinction. And when Bakuda triggered upon receiving a bad grade, Taylor was one of the collateral damage.

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Still another unavoidable fluke

When she awoke from having been hit on the head by the masked terrorist, Taylor noticed two things immediately: the professor with whom she worked was dead in front of her, with multiple stab wounds, and she had a bloodied knife in her hand; the second thing was the digital display on something bulky that hadn't been there before. A display that counted the seconds before the thing would explode, presumably.

And there were only three seconds to go. She wanted to wail, rail at the injustice of the world, and shrivel up and die – although she knew that her parents would be devastated. She also realized that she had her own emergency exit. With a second left, she hurried towards her backpack, plunged her hand inside, and activated her portal just as the timer reached zero.

That was her first trigger.

In most of the scientific literature about parahumans, it is said that the powers come after a trigger event. True. It also says that you had to have specific brain structures for the trigger event to actually make you a parahuman. Also true. What isn't said is that those structure don't emerge naturally. Nor do they imprint in random people's brain while they're in their mother's womb. No.

The probability of displaying parahuman power is linked to harshness from the environment, and the alien entities granting those powers have an overarching program with a semi-consciousness always active across the whole world. Their target are those people on the lowest points of their life, first to identify them (in the case the hardness was only temporary) and then to attribute parahuman powers if a second trigger of a related source happened after the first. They could intervene a third time (what people called "second" trigger) but it was quite rare.

If people from the PRT could have scanned Taylor after her miraculous getaway, they would have observed a Corona Pollentia structure in her brain.

Her subspace detector doubling as a viewport into different space, she could see what happened to her lab and the frantic activity of the people trying to put out the flames there, and the debris. Once the situation was stable enough, with fewer witness of her impossible feats of Tinker-like science, she returned… and called her mother.

She got her mother, alright. She also discovered why it was a bad idea to call people willy-nilly. As it was, her being called caused the woman to look at her phone at a critical moment, and she didn't see the truck that came to her. Honking doesn't remove the necessity for braking, but, even with both, the heavy engine ran through the light-weight vehicle, mostly made of plastics, as if it wasn't there.

Hearing all this, Taylor quickly realized what was happening, which in turn caused so much despair that she triggered again. The Corona structure worked as intended and created the Gemma, to connect Taylor's conscious (and subconscious) thoughts to the power chosen at that moment.

That was her second trigger.

Her power category wasn't Tinker, despite her genius: her acute need, at both triggers, had been to quickly move away. The first time had been because of the bomb; the second was to reach her mother. Of course, she was too late, and ended up throwing up when seeing what little remained of the car and its driver. Powers often were like that: given to escape a situation that had already happened. The visualisation of the carnage added to her already stressed mind, and she ended up adding more of the same.

That was her third trigger.

Powers seemed to love the number three: Eidolon had three powers; Glaistig Unaine had three "fairies" active at one time; many people had three main powers, or three uses of a single power. In the same way, people could only trigger thrice.

Such an event lessened limits to existing powers, generally. For a teleporter, it could mean that they could teleport other people if they couldn't before, or it could mean that they could teleport further. In Taylor's case, it meant that she could teleport other people to her. Blinded by her rage and sorrow, she brought the truck driver to her. He didn't survive being transferred from a moving vehicle (because he had fled the scene) to a standstill: his body arrived and his speed vector promptly smashed him against the nearest wall, giving a visual example of the expression "needing to be peeled off the wall with a spoon".

Still blinded by her emotions, not thinking clearly, and wanting to get at a culprit for the whole thing, she teleported to her "the person who had set the bomb that almost got her".

Bakuda appeared. She was quite surprised, too. And, in a hidden hideout where Lung had been supervising her making her new batch of bombs, her sudden absence had quite the cataclysmic result. The hole in the ground that resulted from the explosive mixture falling haphazardly on the whole workbench, coating the already-prepared ammo… was large. And Lung, who hadn't had enough time to escalate, was vaporized.

The bomb Tinker didn't look like a bomb Tinker, at that moment, which was perhaps the only reason why Taylor didn't teleport her into the Birdcage, or an active volcano, or the depths of the Marianna Trench. She was a young woman, quite intelligent, who quickly got the hang of what was happening – she had triggered because of one suboptimal grade, yes, but that had been because it had threatened the grant she had been on, which in turn would put her visa into jeopardy. And she suspected that it had been done on purpose.

Like Taylor, her trigger event had had nothing to do with her existing specialty: making bombs had only been to avenge herself. What she had studied before was applied psychology. And she immediately used everything she had learnt to calm the obviously angry (and distressed) parahuman teenager in front of her.

Thankfully, it didn't take long for Taylor's obviously overstressed mind to snap, making her fall unconscious.

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Still another unavoidable training

Bakuda had been the name taken by the bomb Tinker who had taken the university hostage, before she defaulted to the Asian Bad Boys. Her bombs having decapitated its leadership, she was sure there would be some retribution… if she was found. Thankfully, most of the ABB had only seen her with a mask, and she got rid of it. Still, despite having had a lab to make her bombs in the middle of the gang's territory, she had older labs with other technological resources. And that's where she brought Taylor.

For three days, the girl was catatonic. She only reacted when she noticed her subspace detector blinking like mad. And, looking through its lens, she saw that many of the Tinker-tech around had parts hidden in subspace. The woman making them had parts of her brain linked to something in subspace. And she, herself, had the same. Because the Gemma was the opening between the host's brain and the alien power given to the parahuman.

Her first reflex was to reject that connexion wholeheartedly. And she jumped to her feet and snatched electronic parts to build another item interacting with subspace, according to her previous researches. To isolate those connexions, and cut them off.

Bakuda watched Taylor work, and despite the technological knowledge granted by her Tinker power, she didn't understand what she was doing. As far as she knew, the girl was a teleporter, a Mover, and not a Tinker. It meant that what she was doing was pure genius. And she could respect that. She resolved to help her, handing pieces of equipment when asked… and being the guinea pig when Taylor announced that her power-remover was done – the would-be psychologist had never actually wanted to make bombs.

And she was promptly made into a regular human again. There were some consequences, as the Gemma wasn't made to connect to nothing, but Taylor had inspected the whole link before making her tool: it inserted a kind of metaphysical mirror between the parahuman and its power, which made the Gemma unable to summon the power, but without a cascading failure in a form of an aneurysm. Still, these brain structures needed the alien power to keep them alive, once the connection had been made, and they soon died.

Interacting with the link made Taylor curious. Instead of cutting her own access, after that, she had her metaphysical mirror shift the power instead of cutting it off. Noticing through her subspace detector the presence and rough "shape" of power shards, she was able to disconnect her Teleporter shard… and connect another that was nearby (a hazy notion, given the state of subspace).

This one was an Efficiency Tinker, for some reason. She experienced the same kind of vision trigger events caused, but she was now able to remember them. It allowed her to make another subspace detector, using Bakuda's freely-given equipment, but she had to force herself not to fall into a fugue, not to dismantle the existing version, and not to create a fully-Tinkertech version. In clear, she used the Efficiency part rather than the Tinker. Her detector was now able to detect more of these things, with more precision, and also to connect to a smartphone for a visual representation of things.

For kicks, she disconnected the Efficiency Tinker and connected to the Bomb Tinker she could perceive "further afield". She noticed that it wasn't for bombs only, because grenades weren't bombs, as such. In fact, the specialty was "Single-use items". And she could make plant seeds, or healing potions, instead. Bakuda shrugged when told this and smiled at her.

"I'm happy to be what I wanted, again." she said. "The triggers had warped my perception of things. And I feel I have to warn you about them, too. On top of that… if you accept, I would study what you do, for a thesis on parahuman psychology."

Taylor nodded, not only because Bakuda had already given her much without asking for anything in return (except for, you know, the fact that she had killed her professor and had almost exploded her).

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Still another unavoidable clash

Taylor returned home after some time. She had called before, telling her dad that she was fine but needed some time alone. That time was spent perfecting her "power selector": a program for her smartphone that could detect nearby powers and those she had already connected to (like a Bluetooth history) and choose one to connect to. The exact specifications of the chosen power varied, but she was more and more able to get exactly what she wanted.

Once home, she discovered that there were people with her dad. People that weren't nice, since they threatened to kill him if she didn't obey. Those people brought the two of them into a subterranean base, where they got to meet the villain named Coil. And his associate, Tattletale (who seemed not quite happy to be there).

Their things were brought over to the two parahuman captors, and the girl villain opened Taylor's phone. And she stared for several seconds at the innocent icon blinking in the corner. Soon, she had opened it, and Taylor felt her perceptions shift – the application was for herself only.

She emerged as her initial power: Teleportation. Though, this time, she could teleport through time as well. She didn't notice right away, focused as she was on getting rid of the villains. For some reason, she had to double down on Coil, moving to the past several times to create doubles able to get him. Once she could snap his connection to his parahuman power, though, it was much easier. Same with Trickster and Noelle.

Tattletale didn't fight and lifted her hands up, and the other parahumans there followed her lead. Once everything was done, Taylor took care of her father (who had been killed early in the fight) by pulling him through time and space. And, hoping against all hope, she did the same for her mother, taking care of annuling her speed vector, this time.

With her tools, she was able to give those who surrendered different powers, or remove them altogether. The Travellers only wanted to go home, with or without powers. Dinah wanted to get rid of her precognition, before doing the same. Taylor did so, but only after teleporting to them, one after the other, all "those who would end up as their enemies". And she snapped their link to subspace.

Butcher, without killing its current host. The Teeth.

Jack Slash. The Slaughterhouse Nine. The Siberian proved difficult, but summoning "the one responsible for the Siberian" got them Manton.

Contessa. Cauldron. Alexandria. Eidolon. Strangely, no Endbringer came afterwards.

Scion. And without its "consciousness", its body ended up quite like its counterpart, dubbed Eden by Cauldron – Legend had been quite volubile, when he understood what was happening. The man hadn't appeared when asking for their enemies, but seeing that they had depowered Eidolon and Alexandria, they thought they had to come clean with the last Triumvirate member.

Powers were still around, but without the Warrior's subconscious influence, they weren't pushing people towards conflict anymore.

And if they were, Taylor would know it, summon you, and remove them. With Tattletale telling all your life story from a glance, she determined if you could have another, if you had to stay a regular human… or if you had to be sent to a dimension far, far away.

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To be continued… unplugged

Author's Notes: Some inspiration from "Distance Learning for Fun and Profit", another good story (can be found on several sites, including this one).