Oh, because I'm a lazy cow, I'm using the metric system, despite the fact Taylor is American.

Why? Well, like I said, lazy cow, I use the metric system because it's so much simpler, and can't be buggered to convert stuff like that when it inevitably comes up. So, metric system. If that annoys you and you don't want to read this story because of that...well, I'd question your priorities, but also wish you a warm farewell.

Also, last chapter was 9k words, this one is 5k, sorry about that boos!

Chapter 2

Pulling herself back out of her own body, she let Body-Taylor explain while she sent herself up to the roof.

It seemed, now that Body-Taylor identified her, she actually had an astral version of her own body. She could touch herself, bite her own lip, even mess with her hair. What she couldn't do was physically touch things. She positioned herself beside the building and reached out, but her hand just phased through the wall. She was even able to just walk herself straight through it, a rather bizarre experience.

When she moved around like that, it was like her own ability to move decided where pieces of the floor should be, since she was walking on nothingness. Once inside, she was even able to focus and drop her astral self onto the ground, though she had no proper sense of weight aside from what was holding her to the ground itself, so each imperfect step didn't kick her off the ground.

Even when she focused on the walls being solid, her hand just phased straight through it, which was confusing. But rather than focus on it too much, she started experimenting, knowing that Body-Taylor was looking after herself. Reaching out with her power, she even touched Body-Taylor slightly, just to make sure her power still worked from a distance, and was able to feel her entire body as well as seeing through her eyes, hearing what she heard, feeling what she felt and all the other senses as well.

The parallel source of sensation was rather jarring, so she only held it for a short while. Apparently, death had made her significantly detached from physical feelings like touch, so experiencing them when she herself wasn't actually able to was freaky. After cutting that connection, she tested carefully to make sure that Body-Taylor didn't get weaker or something when she left her immediate area, first heading about a kilometre away, then returning to double-check and see if Body-Taylor was fine. Then 2, 5, 10, 25 and 50, eventually deciding she was probably safe and jumping up to space, then back to the hospital, just to make really sure Body-Taylor was fine, amusing her with her protectiveness.

Sue her, it was her own body after all. If she accidentally killed...well, herself, by being too hasty, she'd be pissed. Jumping back up into space, she slowly...she needed a name for...shifting. That'd work. She shifted her way down towards the United States, picking out a region that was heavily forested and shifting her way down towards it, eventually ending up on the ground, walking through the forest. Sure, not the most efficient way to travel, but it was...still nice to just walk, not to shift around.

And, all around her, she could feel so much life. There were deer and foxes, raccoons and badgers. In the trees were birds and squirrels and owls and so many different forms of life. That didn't even consider all the insect and smaller life that she could feel. There were so many living things in the forest, from the bacteria and viruses right up to the bears and moose. And she could feel so much of it. Tentatively, she began to feel out just how far she could sense the animals, but she gave up since it seemed that even as she just kept going, she felt no issue with going until she looped the planet.

It fit with her ability to be anywhere, so maybe her control ability extended to everywhere. But...if that was the case, she could literally just take control of the entire planet. The mere notion of doing that was enough for a twinge of fear to pull on her. If they ever knew what she was capable of, and centred their beliefs on the fact that Body-Taylor was the one in control, her body would be hit either with a kill-order, or by being tossed into the Birdcage, neither of which fates she wanted.

Curious about the Birdcage, she started puzzling out a way to find it. Of course, that kind of information wasn't publicly available, but she now had possibly the strongest spy network in the world. Reaching her powers back to Brockton Bay, she could feel all the life she had touched already, including her own body. Drawing on her power, she spread it out, a radius of her influence spreading across the entire country, but specifically looking only for flies, ticks, fleas, and any other small and easily-ignored critter.

Once she encompassed the entirety of North America with them, the entire likely region for the Birdcage, she grasped control of those countless critters, the sensory information she got surprising her for just a moment. But what surprised her more was her ability to focus on...well, all of it. She was seeing from billions...no, trillions of perspectives, something that she knew, right down to her bones, should have utterly killed her.

Shaking her own ethereal head, she re-focused, and was about to command them to look for a hidden base when she focused on one particular group of 'bugs', which has what she was going to call the collective insects smaller than a wolf spider. They were living inside of a closed sanitation system, but what made her very interested was that a few of them were outside, flies that had been born from larvae, and the faces she could see through their compound eyes were utterly unmistakeable.

There was Acidbath and Galvanate, Lab Rat and Lustrum. All four she knew for a completely unconditional fact were residing in the Birdcage, meaning she already had a small insect population inside of the facility. How they got in was almost certainly in the food supplies, just a single egg could sprout into a larvae and then a fly, and it would be so easy to miss just one. The population was tiny though, and it was the only group in there, meaning that obviously whoever ran the place regularly culled the insect population to stop anything funny from occurring.

All that meant though was that she'd have to take a direct hand in things. Using the perspective of her flies, she sent herself into the facility, waiting a little worried for some kind of alarm to go off, some kind of detection system to sense her. After a few seconds of nothing she relaxed, and was subsequently surprised to see that a girl in her early teens was staring directly at her. Not near her, not lost in thought, right at her.

Testing her, Taylor shifted to the side, watching the girl follow her movement, frowning as she did so. Racking her brain for who it was that could see her, she pieced it together when a spectre appeared beside her, tipping her off. It was the Faerie Queen, a pretty famous addition to the Birdcage. The fact she could see her...worried her considerably. The Faerie Queen was able to kill with a touch and steal the powers of those she touched, so she was definitely a...significant threat...who was just staring at her, her jaw dropped slightly. "Uhh, hi?"

It took her audience a few moments to collect themselves, some of the other inmates looking around curiously. "It has been too long since a genuine surprise troops its way out onto the stage. The...no, you are no longer the Queen Administra-" She watched, and had to admit she was a little amused, to see as the eyes in the Faerie Queen's head bug out slightly as she stared at her again. "How is this possible? The Shaper perhaps, but no, her influence has played no part in this play, contented on the sidelines. This is...impossibly different."

Watching her mutter to herself, her eyes not leaving Taylor's own, she honestly was at a loss. Rather than stay silent, she responded, trying a little to mimic the same vocabulary that had been used. "So, the Faerie Queen, in the flesh. Might I ask how I am so different as opposed to what I should be? Surely as I am now is as I always should have been?" She said with a very faint wince, not quite sure of her own words. Talking like that wasn't exactly something she was used to.

"No, you should have been so much less, yet here you are, more than the sum of your parts by far more than half. Never-the-less, I cannot be allowed to say I am not a gracious host. Will you be staying long? It gets dreadfully dull in here, and while sometimes I itch to take a dalliance in the outside world, it would not be looked upon favourably, and I do so enjoy the unique treats that the peasants give to me for adhering to their word." Taking a few moments to work out her own mind, Taylor tried to figure out just how things had gone compared to her own plan.

All she wanted was to see inside the birdcage, all the famous inmates and what they got up to. "I mean, I could stay for a while, You probably have tales to tell of your own. Me, not so much, it hasn't even been a day since I became like this." That prompted an eyebrow from the...well, girl was the best way to put it, even if she knew it was false. Taylor let her feet touch the ground, then crossed her legs and sat.

Around them, she could see the confused inmates of the birdcage looking both at the Faerie Queen, as well as at the empty space she seemed to be talking to, at least from their perspectives. "I suppose so. I felt you, you know, your awakening. It was like the world, no, the very fabric of space around us became charged with energy, then vanished just as swiftly. Very impressive work."

The Faerie Queen sat herself down, using one of her many stolen powers to create a shadowy chair. There, they just...chatted. Initially, Taylor was wary, but as they talked, she found herself simply...talking. When the Faerie Queen asked about her props, and elaborated upon the fact that she saw unpowered humans as just that, she rightfully took offence at that, though, quite amusingly, the girl placated her by simply telling her that to her, they simply were what she said, props, but that if to Taylor, something she herself couldn't properly recognize, the props were otherwise, she would not refute the point. After all, when light was angled correctly, a cylinder would look circular, but from another direction, it would look rectangular.

Hearing that, it honestly got her thinking. It was really all about perspectives. From her own perspective, everybody had betrayed her, but what if it wasn't like that from their stance? What if the Headmaster had a point to her actions? What if the three bitches did? Unlikely, for certain, but there was always that possibility of difference. It didn't mean she had to go forgiving them, nothing like that, but...just to see that everybody had perspectives.

She spent...a great deal of time talking to the Faerie Queen, who insisted upon being called Ciara after Taylor told her to call her that, and when eventually she left, she made sure to rise straight up out of the facility and memorize the location so she could visit again. It wasn't nearly what she intended to have happen when she visited the Birdcage, but the different perspective was nice.

The next time she visited, which she had mentioned before leaving, she told Ciara that she was going to also have a look around, see all the people inside, just to sate her own curiosity. And while she didn't understand why Taylor wanted to investigate the peasants, she immediately fell back into her perspectives mindset and said she didn't mind. Of course, in return Taylor had to promise that she would also spend time talking to her, mostly just for the sake of talking.

It...put into perspective the fact that, in the Birdcage, the inmates were entirely cut off from the world. They knew nothing about what happened on the surface. Not whether loved ones had died in an incident, nor whether their families had new additions and they were uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings or something else. That was something that honestly upset her a little, thinking about it.

As she shifted back to being above Brockton Bay, she rolled over the thought of trying to find a way to communicate not just with Ciara, but also the other inmates, just so she could alleviate some of that disconnection. Sure, nothing sensitive, but if they had a clear reason for wanting to know that she judged good enough, she would try to find out for them.

After all, she could always just have a swarm of bugs or larger life use a computer under her direction and look up the info. Or, even better, have multiple computers, one for each of the inmates. It'd be a disconnected system on their end, relying entirely on her, but it was better than absolutely nothing at all. Her only worry was tipping off the internal security, who Ciara told her was actually an amazingly advanced and sentient AI called Dragon. That was actually someone she knew, even if only indirectly through the news, and was supposedly an agoraphobic young woman, according to the media at least.

Apparently, from things Ciara had pieced together in her time there communicating with Dragon, she was restricted in certain ways. Ciara had managed to, by using things that Dragon distinctly didn't say, figure out that Dragon was physically incapable from ignoring lawful orders given by her superiors, even if she utterly disagreed with the orders. That meant that if she saw something obviously not allowed inside of the Birdcage, she had to report it, like Ciara using her powers. But, if she never directly 'saw' it, then she had no such obligation, all she would have was speculation, something she didn't have to act upon.

Knowing that, Taylor started to piece together a plan.

Shifting into the hospital room housing Body-Taylor, she felt a flicker of amusement when she saw that Panacea had taken the other bed and was fast asleep.

Body-Taylor was still awake, and on her arrival obviously happy to see her. Since she didn't want her talking and waking the other girl up, she entered her own body, conversing with Body-Taylor inside of her own mind. Body-Taylor had explained some stuff to the other two, and eventually her father left while Panacea, who by this point was visibly exhausted from using her power for such a long time all but collapsed onto the other bed. The reason she didn't leave was because decontamination procedures would have taken too long and she was just too tired to care.

After a while, she brought up her plan to Body-Taylor, who laughed as she reminded Taylor that she already knew. Or rather, when Taylor 'merged' with her, that was the moment she knew what Taylor had been up to, saving a pretty complicated explanation. The saying two heads and better than one was also fairly appropriate there, as having a second opinion to bounce ideas off or even make their own was a novel experience, not something she had ever had, not since Emma turned on her.

Emma. Her thoughts stalled a little as she thought about her. What if...it wasn't Emma's fault? Perhaps extenuating circumstances that led her to be basically forced to do it? Sophia...she couldn't see any sort for her, she was too genuinely malicious, and would definitely be one of the few she was going to be keeping a very close eye on. To that effect she reached out to all of the bugs across the city, ordering them to keep an eye out for Sophia Hess and tell her where she was when discovered.

All the bugs meant she pretty much instantly was told where she was, so she took control of all of her bugs, focusing immediately on the perspectives that could see her. She was asleep, which was to be expected. She sent some of the smaller bugs to hide in and around her place, including in clothing and her hair, any viable hiding spot really. She was mostly curious to see a day in the life of Sophia Hess, see whether there really was any sort of justification for her actions or if she really was that much of a psycho as to do that with no real reason.

She did the same for Emma, knowing where her house was. She unmerged from Body-Taylor and shifted over to Emma's house, then into her room, to see her sleeping. What stopped her with confusion was that she was clutching onto a stuffed animal. Not just any stuffed animal though, it was one she had won for her at a game on the Boardwalk, and thought it had long-since been burned or something by the 'stronger' Emma.

That was strike one in her favour, that something...wasn't right. Emma had said to her a few times that she was stronger than before, mixed in with all the other verbal attacks which stung way worse to her than any punch. While Sophia knew how to hurt someone physically, Emma had known her since first grade, she knew pretty much every single fear she had, every single weakness, and exploited them whenever she saw an opening.

But this sleeping and more honest version of Emma was anything but an image of strength. She was clutching the stuffed animal like it was a lifeline, occasionally kicking and letting quiet whines from her throat. Maybe a nightmare, she had no idea. And maybe her speculation was correct, but it didn't stop what happened, and she saw no real reason to wake Emma up and risk detection just because of a nightmare.

Deciding to adopt a wait-and-see approach like she was with Sophia, she set some bugs to keep an eye on her. Madison...she wasn't really as interested in. She was always the hanger-on, the extra pair of hands really, and the one even she could tell was nowhere near as into the bullying as the other two. That one she could absolutely chalk up to peer pressure. Sure, she still didn't like her, but that also didn't mean she felt it really necessary to go out of her way to deal with her. Sophia...well, she was just looking for a way to fuck her over.

Sure, she barely felt anything but sparks of emotions anymore, but that didn't mean 18 months of torment was just forgotten. She still remembered how it felt, every day, and a little revenge sounded perfectly fair. maybe waking up to a spider on her ceiling, then having it start dropping towards her...no, that was too petty, too...too much like them for her liking. She wanted revenge in some form, sure, but she didn't want to drop down to their level, to deliberately torment them, any of them, as they did to her.

No, she wanted revenge, but she wanted it to be her own style of revenge.

Before, Taylor would have definitely had a problem with what she was planning to do.

She would have thought that even then she was stooping too far towards their level. She even recognized that fact, knew she would have been thinking like that. but, well, she was different after the locker, so a change in her thought process, especially after what she might as well call her death, was reasonable enough. One interesting thing to learn was how easy it was to have two consecutive plans running through her mind at once.

On one hand, she was trying to find a way to communicate in the Birdcage to the other inmates without getting the attention of Dragon. And on the other, she was deriving a plan that would see Sophia utterly ruined. It took barely any investigation to find the hidden compartment in Sophia's wardrobe that had her suit, revealing her secret identity as Shadow Stalker and giving Taylor another piece of the puzzle, making it that much easier for her to plan for the girl.

Emma was...different though. When morning came and she woke up, she honestly couldn't get a real feel for her. She acted strong, like she didn't wake up and spend ten minutes silently crying into the stuffed animal. When she left her room, she was haughty, stern and generally as bitchy as she was at school. But Taylor knew she wasn't strong, what she saw confirmed it. Taylor was stronger than her before the locker, she never needed to cry into her pillow, even when it felt like the entire world just wanted her to die.

So, for now, she would shelve her plans for Emma, and focus entirely on Sophia. Maybe by removing the sadistic and corrupting girl from the picture would help matters. And that plan was coming along nicely. She already had plenty of evidence she had built up in the 18 months of torment, and a lot of the physical abuse was on Sophia's head, only a very minor portion of physical abuse coming from Emma and Madison.

Sure, the school could shove things like that under the rug, Winslow High was pretty much just a gang-recruitment building for half the students anyway, but if she managed to get that file in front of the noses of the media, they would take the story and run with it. Sure, it was breaking the unwritten truce, but if word got out that Shadow Stalker, a Ward, was actually a sadistic teenager, the PRT wouldn't be able to hide that. They would be forced to address it.

If she gave that info to the PRT, they would probably try to do the same as the school, hide it away in order to keep a Ward. After all, one High School girl being a focused target and others being peripherally bullied, versus a parahuman? There was no contest as to which was more valuable in their eyes. Then again, the head of the PRT in Brockton Bay was known to have a distrust towards capes, so perhaps if she managed to get that dossier to her, she would actually do something, however unlikely as it was.

But no, her first, and best plan, was for the media to receive the folder. Whoever she gave first pick would adore the chance to be the first with a headline like "Shadow Stalker - Hero or Villain?" or something equally eye-catching. It would sell as a story absurdly well, and anyone who did see it wouldn't likely forget. Questions would be asked and fingers pointed, something the PRT really weren't going to be able to force under the carpet.

They'd be left with a few choices. Cause a major stink by keeping her on and denouncing the evidence. Make a token attempt at investigating and put Sophia somewhere away from the public. Or, they could make a serious investigation, discover exactly what Shadow Stalker was really like, which was not heroic at all when it suited her, and subsequently get her away, either into juvie or at least out of the Wards.

Deciding upon that plan of action, she had a group of spiders get into her room, retrieving her folder full of evidence from the top of her wardrobe and putting it on the floor. When there, she started getting them to pick through all the contents, taking out anything that directly mentioned her. Anyone observant enough would be able to piece together who she was, it was more about making it hard for the media to figure out who she was and try to find her for interviews or whatever. Then again, even if they did find her, right now she was in a biohazard room in the ICU of the hospital, not somewhere a reporter could ever get access to.

Once satisfied, she had the spiders crawl the lighter folder out of the window, setting an Albatross that had been flying over the bay to pick the folder up. From there, she had it take the folder towards the hospital, where her plan stalled slightly. She needed a way to get the folder into her room so she could work on it, but the room was in the ICU and it was a biohazard room, so the entrance would be monitored constantly.

She spent a good ten minutes pondering this problem before reaching a solution. She could just tell her father to take the folder with him. If she left it on the dashboard of his car, or maybe on the seat, he would be basically forced to notice it. All she'd need to do was write a note on it, telling him what to do with it and not to read it since it was important. if she signed it as Guardian-Taylor, he'd know it was her that did it, so he wouldn't question it too much.

It only took a moment for her to connect to all the bugs in the city and parse through the millions and billions of perspectives to find the right car, realizing as she shifted there that she was actually acting a bit like an AI. Obviously not, she was human, but her ability to use so many perspectives at once was definitely reminiscent of an AI. The writing a note bit would be difficult, so instead of doing that, she just focused on the wolf-spider that was in its nest at the school, having it enter the school, go to the computer lab, boot one up, then typed out the aforementioned note before switching on the printer and printing out the sheet of paper.

She sent the albatross to the school, while the spider too the printed piece of paper, carefully folded it a few times, then pinched it between two legs and carried it out of the school, up onto the roof. That was when she realized she was an idiot. If she got the folder into her room, how was she meant to get it back out? But then, the main reason she wanted it there was to write amendments and point things out. It'd be a little harder, but she could just use the school computer for that.

While the spider went back down to the computer lab, the albatross landed on the roof. Leaving the folder tucked into the vent for shelter, she had it flying around looking for open windows. The main opening was the hole Glory Girl had smashed into the wall of the locker room, which had been covered in yellow tape and a tarp. Redirecting the spider, she sent it to the locker room, where it could see the cords holding the tarp up.

Biting through just two of these let one portion of the tarp fold away, leaving a nice wide opening for the albatross to fly inside. It flew back up to the roof, having been waiting on the ground, and retrieved the folder, flying it inside. Since she needed more than one spider to lift the folder up, she hunted around, finding about half a dozen brown recluse-sized spiders around the school, directing them all to move to the locker room and assist the wolf spider in moving the folder to the computer room.

While they did this, she sent off the albatross, looking around the room. It had been mostly cleaned up, no sign of the larvae or any of the other crap that had been in there. Her locker was shut and had been heavily taped up in biohazard tape, so obviously the stuff in there needed to be disposed of properly. If whoever came here marked it like that, and things were still shoved under the rug, she was definitely going to be...unhappy. Now that she was different, there was no way she was going to put up with Body-Taylor being treated badly.

Then again, Body-Taylor seemed a lot more confident and firm than she was when she was alive, so maybe she could handle herself. The point was that she was not going to hesitate to drop a spider or two on Sophia if she tried anything funny. She would, however, hold off on her plans, at least regarding them, until the start of term at the very least. She wanted to see the reactions when they were told exactly how bad off Taylor had been before Panacea healed her. Sophia would probably not care, but Madison was probably going along and not thinking of the consequences, and Emma...she still didn't quite know where her old friend stood.

So, to avoid any kind of change, she would do nothing. She would watch Emma and Sophia closely, and Madison only peripherally, and see just how they reacted to the fact that she was basically dead when she was found. Maybe Emma would simply keep up her facade of strength and sneer at the fact Taylor had nearly died because of their actions. Or maybe the realization that she nearly got one of her old friends killed would take the mask from her face. Because Taylor knew it had to be a facade. A facade she only let down when she was in her room, in a private and safe place from the world.

And perhaps Emma's facade was covering up her weakness, or maybe an even worse darkness than Sophia's...that was what she wanted to find out.

So, plans are being made.

I honestly have no idea what I'm doing half the time though, so who knows, maybe it'll turn out that Emma had a hidden evil side all along or something...nah, probably not, I'm too soft for that...wait shit Chapter 1 of this proves I can be cruel...uhh, Gate to Obscurity!

...Damn, they must be having a coffee break.