A/N: This chapter was initially written as an interlude to accompany Co-Op mode. For those of you at all familiar with Worm, there are quite commonly Interludes at the end of story arcs showing other characters. This interlude was written mostly as a recap of the events of Character Creation, just retold from Taylor's point of view. This will not continue throughout A Bug in the Game. Taylor is the protagonist of her own story and later chapters will make more effort to add new content and not simply be a repeat from a different perspective.

Noob 1.2

Something was rotten in the state of Winslow. Not that rot was anything new. Since my first day at Winslow I had been bullied by my ex-friend Emma along with all of Emma's hangers on – predominantly Sophia Hess and Madison Clements. No one ever did anything about stopping it. The administration and teachers preferred to play blame-the-victim or were simply clueless. I couldn't tell which. I know my classmates weren't clueless. They either joined in the abuse or turned a blind eye to it. In a way that was worse. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing." Today the willing blindness ran especially strong. Many students actively ignored me and avoided my gaze. Something was most certainly rotten.

I had actually been looking forward to this part of Mr. Gladly's World Issues class. We were finally discussing capes. Mr. Gladly was shockingly teaching for once instead of his usual group work and discussion time. He had a passion in his voice as he lectured that he usually reserved for trying to befriend the cool kids. Yet, I couldn't make myself care. Thirty or so minutes until class ended, and then an hour for lunch. An hour was far too much time for whatever was being planned. I glanced over my shoulder to where Madison Clements sat two rows to her left and two seats back. Madison met my gaze and smirked. I lowered my eyes to my notebook and tried to ignore the ugly sour feeling in my stomach.

The hardest part was that I didn't have to take their abuse day after day. I was a parahuman and while the power to control bugs wasn't a great one, it would be so very easy to go Carrie on the school. I controlled my swarm, my swarm obeyed my every whim, but when I got emotional those emotions tended to bleed out into my swarm. For that reason I worked very hard to keep a wall up between myself and my power at school. If I lost it at school, it might be momentarily satisfying, but then I would forfeit my future. Even if I merely tormented them a bit and didn't kill them, I'd still be labeled a villain. My dreams of being a hero would be lost. Setting that aside, my powers made me stronger than them. Using my powers for revenge, even against the trio, would lower me to their level. I would not stoop to their level and bully someone just because I could. I was better than that.

On the other hand, maybe I could use my powers to avoid whatever it was they had planned for me. Thirty-three minutes left in class. Enough time to take a little peek around and still wall my power back off. I relaxed my barrier and in a blink they were all there, every creepy-crawly within blocks around answered to my will. A little bit of scouting couldn't hurt. Madison was easy. I put a fly on the bow in her hair and sent a few more bugs crawling around inside her backpack. I was still trying to work on how to interpret what my bugs were telling me, but as far as I could tell she had nothing but books and papers in her bag.

Nevermind, some of my exploring bugs discovered someone in trapped in a locker. It might even be my locker. I didn't have enough bugs to build a good enough map to tell. Judging by the way everyone wasn't looking at me, it pretty much had to be my locker. Was this a trap? How was Emma going to twist this to make it my fault? There weren't bugs in the locker until I sent a few in there. From them I could tell there was no blood and trash filling the locker, just a person, probably male because of short hair and flat chest. Still, even without the trash no one deserved to be trapped in a locker.

I thrust my hand up in the air. "Mr. Gladly?"

He looked surprised. "Yes, Taylor? Do you have something to contribute?"

"May I please go to the bathroom?"

The class laughed at my interruption. Oddly they were laughing at Mr. Gladly this time as my question seemed to have thrown him completely off his stride. Well, most of them were laughing at Gladly. Some of the boys were probably laughing merely because I said bathroom. From what I could tell half the boys in my class still thought fart jokes were the pinnacle of funny.

Mr. Gladly waved me off. "Fine. You can go, Taylor."

He was supposed to give me a hall pass, but Mr. Gladly never bothered to follow that rule. I grabbed my backpack, because I probably wouldn't be coming back. Gladly either didn't notice or didn't care. He went back to talking about the dawn of capes. Madison looked sour when I glanced at her. I took that as a good sign that I was derailing whatever was planned for me.

A brisk walk brought me quickly to the hallway with my locker. The banging sound of someone desperately trying to get out of my locker brought forth the bad memories. I could almost feel the corridor closing in on me, tight and constrictive. Nightmares clawed at the doors of my mind the same way that I'd clawed at my own flesh trying to keep the bugs off me. I could smell the stench of blood, decay and vomit. I knew it was my imagination, but that didn't mean it wasn't real. The locker changed me. Not like a forge that made me stronger. The locker broke me. I lost myself in there and it took a long time to put myself back together. I was stronger now. At least I hope I was stronger now, but sometimes late at night I wondered if I went insane in there, that I was still locked up in the psych ward and trapped in the nightmare that was Winslow. I pushed those thoughts back under the bed with my other monsters and reached for the door to unlock it. Naturally the lock chose that moment to give way and someone fell on top of me. I gave a little girly squeal as we tumbled to the floor. I'm not proud of it, but that's what happens when you spend too long huffing your own nightmare fuel.

Lying on top of me was a boy that I kinda sorta knew. "James, were you in MY locker?"

"I think Sophia wasn't creative enough to stuff me in a different locker." He rolled off me without a thank you for breaking his fall, but he seemed as embarrassed as I was and didn't get handsy.

I pushed up and got to my feet. My locker gaped open. James had done a number on it from the inside. He'd been luckier than I'd been. I'd been facing the wall. I had tried and tried to kick backwards, but it hadn't worked. I shuddered involuntarily. "At least it's clean this time."

Awkward silence. James… I knew him, but not recently. We haven't had any classes together and we didn't ride the same bus. Well, not at Winslow. We had shared classes back at Rafferty Middle School and I'd known him before then, all the way back to elementary. I couldn't honestly remember when we first met. He was just one of those classmates that had been around a long time, which is why we were on a first name basis. Despite that we were merely acquaintances. In James's favor he'd never joined in teasing or bullying me. That put him a step above most Winslow students. He was also looking a bit shaken up. I could definitely sympathize. "Hey, there's nothing in there, and I wasn't using the locker or anything. We'll just leave and no one will blame you for the locker. Unless Emma or Madison or Sophia says you did or something. But the dent is from the inside, so maybe the teachers will believe you were locked in there or-"

"Don't worry about it. I'll be fine. I think I just need to..."

Fine. That was one of my favorite words these days. Whenever my father asked, the answer was always "I'm fine." I knew all about fine. James wasn't fine. I offered him my best sympathetic look while giving him a chance to pull himself together.

"I'm hungry. And I hear Fugly Bob's lost the whole 'frying veggie-patties in lard' lawsuit. I'll pay?"

What? Was he asking me out?! "You'd better not mean-"

"Do I look like Greg? No, I just wanted to talk with you. And eat something. Preferably lard-free. And meat-free. And Bob's is closest, and I wouldn't presume to ask someone to come along without paying."

I frowned, not at his words, but at myself. I was starting to act like a dog who had been kicked too often, unable to trust and snapping at everyone. James wasn't one of my bullies. He was a victim like me. If he needed someone to listen, I could do that. I forced an awkward smile onto my face. "Okay, Fugly Bob's sounds good."

A burger, fries and a milkshake later I was wondering what the hell it was that James wanted to discuss with me and why he'd picked Fugly Bob's. Sure, I enjoyed a good burger, but there were plenty of other restaurants where he could have ordered vegetarian while I had something else. Fugly Bob's was practically a temple to grilled cow and grease. The lunch crowd had faded out and while there were some employees cleaning up we were relatively private. So... what was it that he wanted? Or had he actually wanted a date? James wasn't really my type. Not that I'd dated, but I knew what I liked. I liked my beefcake with more beef. James didn't look out of shape. He had a lean but not soft look to him. Still there was a little too much nerdy/geek to him that didn't do it for me. He seemed nice enough, but I didn't want to talk about the latest videogame or if Eidolon could beat Legend in a fight.

James awkwardly broke the silence. "So... I thought you'd stopped using your locker...?"

Yeah, not going to tell him about how my bugs told me that he was in there. "I was walking past and saw the door bulging. I almost thought Emma had filled it with something again but I heard banging."

"Nope. It was Sophia. And some Nazis. Maybe I should be proud. I got Nazis to work with a black chick..." He smiled weakly at his attempted humor. "Almost done?"

The Nazi's probably recognized a kindred spirit. Just like them Sophia wanted to cleanse the weak. If she'd been born white, I'm sure she'd been in Empire Eighty-Eight. Looking at James I was obviously going to have to force the issue. "So, I don't think you asked me here to talk about lockers..."

"Actually, I did. Or more accurately, what I think happened in there. Sorry, I know you don't want to talk about it, and it's really not something you should bring up." Like an old car he stuttered, but somehow kept on going. "And I don't mean you-you, I mean a more general you, in this case me - I mean..."

My sympathy for James being stuffed in a locker faded quickly as he tried to equate our two experiences. They weren't the same. I'd suffered a fucking psychotic break when I got powers. He'd gotten up and walked away like nothing had happened. Then he tried to claim they'd given him powers?! This had to be some kind of setup. Without conscious control I'd been drawing in bugs from all around. I had more flies than anything and not many good attack bugs. I sent my swarm out searching all around. If this was a setup, if the trio or anyone else was listening in, I'd know soon.

"The same thing happened to me right before I ended up in the locker. I think... I, uh, think I'm…" He paused to look around with a dramatically like we were in some espionage thriller. "…A parahuman."

No way. "Getting yourself out of a clean locker gave you powers? And what powers do you have?"

"No, it was the beating and threatened stabbing beforehand that did it. And I-"

"Who put you up to this?" My bugs hadn't found a trio of girls or anyone else watching, but I couldn't be sure of that. While I could locate people easily enough, determining what they were doing was more of a challenge. He had me in a bad spot, but some wasps had arrived and I could call upon them along with a ton of flies. However, we were in a public place. Using them would blow my secret right open.

"I triggered. At first it just seemed like a really crappy Thinker power - I can tell exactly how close to dying I am. And watching that tick closer while those punks beat me-"

Sure he had. I'd been a victim of Sophia's too often to believe that. It was an odd relief to know that he was lying. "Stop. You're not even good at this. You aren't injured, not even bruised. Your clothes are barely ruffled."

"That's the second thing I noticed - I seem to regenerate. Not too fast, but maybe nine or ten minutes from almost dead to perfectly fine."

"That's... convenient." Too convenient. So this was some kind of trap. I'd now tagged everyone nearby and none of them matched the trio. "And why are you telling me this?"

"Well, it seems I also get some information about everyone I look at. Name. Threat level. And some extra information. Like 'unaffiliated parahuman'. And... I don't know. It just seemed like... you're a friend, and neither of us has many, and all things considered I thought I could tell you."

A friend?! There was no one else. Just James and me and he thought we were locker buddies now. Some of my flies buzzed him and I had to consciously reel them in. "Friends? You think we're friends? When did we become friends? Did you help out when I was being bullied? Did you get me out of the locker? Did you tell ANYONE who did that to me?"

"I tried-"

Bullshit. "Tried? What did you try?"

"Do you remember that… What about the time I… sonovacrap. I tried to let you out of the locker, but Madison tackled me. Broke my collarbone. But the weird strap set-up the doctor's had me on by the time you got back to school was probably covered by my backpack every time we bumped into each other in the hall. I've got no way of proving shit though."

And he just kept shoveling on the bullshit. I knew my anger was getting the best of me. Pushing it into my swarm helped keep my anger cold instead of hot, but I had to hold my bugs back from swarming James and I wasn't doing a good enough job. Several of them buzzed James, a symptom of my ill-repressed anger.

Then James made a grab for me. That was unexpected, but I still yanked my hand out of the way while sending in my wasps. Except he wasn't grabbing for my hand. He grabbed my fork and stabbed his own hand. I quickly had my wasps veer off. That had been close. I'd almost blown my secret identity. Fuck! Regenerative powers. James was trying to prove it – in public. I lunged across the table, yanked the fork out and tossed it aside. No blood. No wound. However, his face was certainly twisted up to show that it still hurt. "Are you okay?"

James held up his hand clearly showing what I'd already seen. No visible damage. "Huh. You saw that, right?"

So James was some kind of low end brute. That explained how he'd dented the hell out of my locker, but he was being stupid. Someone might notice. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him outside. We needed somewhere to talk more privately. My bugs and some crabs informed me that there was a delivery truck in the closest alleyway, but the tide was out and there were no people under the boardwalk. Not letting go of James's hand, I pulled him past some shops, down an unmarked stairwell to the beach and under the boardwalk.

Walking gave me a chance to get myself under control although I was far from calm. What had James been thinking? No, he clearly hadn't been thinking, but that wasn't exactly new for James. Between the bullying and not having him in classes I'd forgotten what James was like. He was what my mother called a narrow intellect, brilliant in some narrow field, clueless about everything else. Narrow intellects didn't impress mom, too caught up in their own head to see the world around them. That fit James. Now to explain it to him in small words.

.oOo.

I stayed under the boardwalk when James left to hurry home warned by a quest alert. I needed some time to think things through. James wanted to team up. He considered me a friend and I liked that feeling. Thinking back I remembered something that I'd lost in the shuffle of events. James claimed he'd defended me in the locker and Madison of all people had broken his collarbone. Had that been true?

Probably, yes. Frankly, he wasn't good enough of an actor to fake his reactions. A broken bone was a whale of a story to just make up. Lots of people had to know that. There would be medical and school records. Not to mention that lots of people should have seen Madison tackle him. If I hadn't been out of school for a week and a half and totally cut off from school gossip, then I would have known about it. Just like everyone knew the trio put me in the locker. So… what did that say about me? Were there others like James out there that had tried to help me, and I'd been too busy having my personal pity party to notice?

Did it matter? The past was the past. Learn the lesson and try to do better. For now that meant accepting the hand that James offered in friendship. He wanted to team up and was willing to let me take the lead. That was good. Independent heroes didn't last long, but small teams had much better odds. Even Uber and Leet were still around. Plus he was a low-end brute. Given that I was squishy even with my armor, a brute as a partner would be a good thing. Especially if he got tougher as he gained 'experience.' That would need testing.

I scattered my swarm out and headed toward the stairs. I needed to do some research. I knew very little about the various RPG type games. I had once received a little gaming console for Christmas which I mostly ignored. I played Tetris, some virtual pet game, and another game with some guy with a sword running around trying to rescue a princess. Naturally I couldn't play a girl with a sword trying to rescue the prince. Levels and hit points reminded me of that and also that Capes and Crooks game that Greg Veder tried to get me to 'play' with him. I'd seen some games like that in used bookstores. There was one not too far off the boardwalk. If I was going to be doing testing with James on Saturday, then I'd better learn the lingo. They might even have some good ideas.