Taylor was not looking forward to today. At all. It was snowing, though it looked like it would not stick. She had an unusually steadiness to her thought, she realized suddenly.

"Come on, kiddo. We need to get you there early," her father Danny said. "I'm actually surprised at how well you bounced back."

"Um, me too." Taylor followed her father out to his older car. She patted the small of her back, where she had used a stretch ace bandage to place the lens against her skin. Safe on her and active. Just in case.

On the drive to school, Taylor sat thinking. 'Mentor of Arisia?' she shouted out mentally.

'To within a half second! Mentor continues to always show that there is more to learn and expand one's mind. But to correct your thought, I am not Mentor of Arisia, but one of his many students. You may call me Student on Far Earth,' the mental voice explained.

Taylor blinked, as she had not thought that could work. 'Why am I so calm and collected? And you are precognitive?'

'To answer your first question, I took matters to correct the psychological scarring that was inflicted. To forestall your worry, this is the culmination of the type of skills that your own psychologists have started to come to a crude understanding of. You are still yourself, but more well adjusted and able to cope with your trauma. To your second question, no. Precognition posits an unchanging universe. Our mere look into the future would either be impossible or predestined, giving us no illusion of free will. What we can do is calculate things in great detail and understand how they should interact to a very high degree as based on our current understanding."

'So you just fixed my brain with telepathy?' Taylor actually had a very hard time believing that. 'And you are so smart you just understand how everything will work out, but it's not predestined.'

'To put it crudely, yes. I will leave you to your thoughts.'

Ten minutes later, she was still grappling with those thoughts as if they were some immense beast on the verge of overwhelming her. Taylor then was pulled out of her thoughts, quite literally, by Danny pulling the old Oldsmobile up to the curb in front of the school.

"Hey? Are you really okay going back there? I've been trying to convince Principal Maddens that he should push harder at transferring you to Arcadia," Danny said, trying to smile.

"I'm fine. Really. It's like the docs put my brain back together better than it was before," she explained with a grin. She opened the door and stepped out.

As she walked up to the front doors, she noticed people giving her strange looks.

"I thought she was sent away? Locked up in the looney bin?" one girl asked in the background.

"She's different, like that forced her to pull herself together. Like a new person," her boyfriend said.

The door closed behind her. She started to walk to her locker in habit, then realized that there wouldn't be anything left. Which was fine, everything she had left in it had been stained or messed up already. With a nod, she walked up the main stairwell to the library to get new school books.

As promised, free and totally new textbooks. Exiting with her books for the morning (the other ones in behind the counter until lunch) she headed to her first class. She was actually still early and plopped into the seat in the center back row.

She was keeping herself aware of things without trying to look like bait for the trio-trap. So saying, she was playing with both of her powers, trying to get the feeling of what she could do with her bugs and sensing them.

And trying to make sense of the emotions and partial thoughts she was sometimes getting. So she was surprised when she felt hate and animosity at the doorway just six minutes before the bell

"Well well, if it isn't Tattletale Taylor. I thought you'd be gone for at least another week," Sophia Hess said, a twisted smile on her face. She was giving off a confident look, but underneath was something darker, a hungry urge to hurt and inflict pain. But overshadowing everything was a small bit of worry and a sharp tang of unexpected surprise.

Emma Barnes and Madison Clements their best haughty impersonations as they 'invaded' her one safe class. "Well, at least she isn't foaming at the mouth," Emma said.

That got a titter out of Madison, the most 'cute' one of the group.

"I didn't realize your obsession has gotten so ingrained that you couldn't do without me," Taylor said tensely, but barbed home sent home. "I mean, what would you do with your petty, spiteful and mean lives if I wasn't around to bully? Kick puppies and steal candy from babies?" And, to Taylor's self shock, she meant every word.

The alien thing in the back of her mind reacted as it felt something. Something Taylor picked up just a second later. An echo of another alien. She blinked her chocolate brown eyes, narrowing them as she realized someone here... someone else here was a parahuman.

"Fuck you, Taylor. You're just a worthless crybaby, headed to your next breakdown," Sophia replied angrily. The hunger in her grew as her anger expanded. '-ucking weakling pre-'

Down the hall about fifty feet away she felt an older, more organized mind moving through the last minute crowd of students.

"So you find something even worse to stuff in my locker, then assault me and stuff me into the locker again? I mean, what are you going to get this next time? Dirty diapers?" Taylor prodded carefully, with very specific timing. The glare she was giving the trio did not have the hint of the broken girl from a week ago.

"Nah, we will do something different. No need to repeat the same things to keep you in your place," the dark skinned girl said, her smile showing her pearly white teeth in an unfriendly smile. That look... that was no longer prey. And Sophi hated that. Taylor was her prey.

"Well, that sounded like you put Taylor in that nasty locker a week ago. Girls," Mrs. Knott said from right behind them.

They all started in surprise and turned around.

"What? We wouldn't put her in there-" Madison started to say rapidly, her eyes blinking too quickly.

Emma and Sophia were just glaring at Mrs. Knott as they started thinking rapidly.

"Don't you have class to go to?" the woman asked, finally blinking. She looked away and down over to her desk.

The trio retreated even as Taylor just watched them leave. Then she started to pack her new backpack, leaving her books. As the bell rang she stood up.

"Taylor? What are you doing?" Mrs. Knott asked.

"Leaving. It's obvious no one in this school is going to do their job and stop the bullies. Even when they admit they stuffed me in that- that- that locker in front of you. So I'm leaving and not coming back," she said very quietly and very angrily.

The older woman looked like she had just been slapped and just watched as her student just walked out.

Taylor stopped at a payphone near the front office to call her dad at work.

"Taylor? Is something wrong?" Danny asked. "Do I need to pick you up?" He sounded slightly panicked.

"No. Not like that. I just found out that no one here will do anything, even when they heard the girls claim responsibility for assaulting me. So I'm going home. Maybe we can look at home study." Taylor leaned her forehead on the broken wall next to the old style wood cubby hole.

"We'll talk when we get home. This is starting to be criminally lenient." Danny's voice sounded very cold suddenly.

"I'll see you when you get off?" Taylor asked.

"Sure."

"Later," she said, then hung up.

She walked out the front door passing a startled teacher that was outside smoking in the cold and light snow.

"Hey! Get back to class," he yelled out, looking upset.

"I don't go to school here any more. And yes, my father does know," she shouted right back.

That stopped him. He nodded once as he got a better look.

The bus ride across town on the bus was fairly uneventful, filled with business suits and the occasional mother or father with small children. As she sat there, she scribbled as carefully as she could. She remembered a small snippet of a show that talked about spider silk and its strength. She jotted down some self defense ideas.

With her notepad under her arm, she exited in front of the Brockton Bay City Library that had barely opened.

The man at the check in desk sighed to himself as he saw her there. "Couldn't you wait an hour to be truant?" he asked with a half grin.

"I'm not going back to that school and I think my dad agrees. So I have the day off until we can figure something out," Taylor said quite sincerely.

The librarian shrugged. He'd call the truancy officer later if he remembered. Or cared, he thought to himself.

Taylor pulled up a browser and checked her email, only finding a vicious email sent from some dummy account of one of the trio. She archived it, not that it would do any good, then pulled up a web page to check on what she remembered about spider silk.

Better than she had thought, actually. Darwin Spider silk thread was stronger than regular silk and even kevlar by a high degree, nearly matching Carbon Longsynth.

Taylor took a moment to blink in surprise. Carbon Longsynth what? "Where did that come from." She narrowed her eyes. Not from her 'Rider' as she started to call her bug powers. She felt a small thought link to her Lens. On the other end lay a vast library of... the best way she could describe it was science. Advanced knowledge of engineering and how things worked.

And, even more weirdly, how to build it in your garage. She almost called to Student on Far Earth again, then stopped herself. She could not expect him to always answer. She needed to be smart enough to figure this out. But it was obvious that this knowledge was effectively Tinker technology. So very much not what she expected. She focused her mind on the concept of 'Carbon Longsynth' and started to absorb information about the synthetic molecule chain.

It was not the strongest, but it was the most easy for a pre-interstellar society to manufacture. The idle thought of a space ship flashed several things across her mind; inertialess drives, power plants and advanced computers and alloys all needed.

Nothing within her reach or even remotely possible for her to make

The warning that her computer session was about to time out jarred her out of her thoughts. She printed some information on spider-silk, then actually thought about a basic weaving loom. She logged out and started to scribble on her notebook on ideas for the 'kit bash' home unit for making Carbon Longsynth.

And then look at starting homeschooling, which ended up making her feel better. No more Winslow High, Emma Barnes or Sophia Hess and crew.

Her costume felt weird, Taylor decided a week later and late at night. She had added a soft cotton suit of padding, making the outfit fairly comfortable. For her feet, she added grips and padding from slippers. For her 'mask' she used swimming goggles lenses. The carapace armor ended up being a small deal made by her bugs and layers of the Carbon Longsynth. She had even had to take a long walk and have her bugs build small parts all around the neighborhood to get it done in time. That sped things up dramatically. She turned that into a jog after the first day, expanding her area. Her dad did buy her pepper spray to defend herself, worried about her being attacked.

That pepper spray ended up being her 'defense' weapon, though she did take a short rod of hardwood with the ends rounded. She had made a gauntlet on the back of her hands in case she needed to punch someone. Her belt pouch ended up including things things like zip-ties, a small flare, a penlight (that she probably wouldn't need, but just in case) and rubber gloves. She wanted an E-Pen in case of an allergic reaction, but ran out of funds quickly.

Her Lens was now in a special pocket that kept it pressed against the skin of her belly on her left side. She stretched out her bugs and her 'mind' powers to make sure her father was asleep and no one was around to see her depart.

She was effectively invisible in her mottled gray and black armor, her bugs and sense of minds allowing her to move around the groups of people still awake as she loped along towards the 'docks' section of town. The feeling of panic and fear cut through the night and she was moving.

Taylor cursed as she realized she must have been spotted, as a couple of mind flared in fear and wariness. Her insects were closer and started to arrive in greater and greater numbers. The two thugs started to swat at bugs only to suddenly realize that they were being swarmed.

Their cries of alarm started to become frantic as they tried to swat the flies and moths out in the cold. They both failed to hear the wheezing girl catch up. More bugs were arriving, but the cold was making them lethargic and they were actually dying faster.

Their victim, an older woman clutching three bags of groceries, was blinking in astonishment.

With a thought, she unleashed her bugs she had kept hidden and warm under her different panels of armor in hollow spaces. She tripped the one that tried to run there, putting his face into the cold concrete.

"You are under hero arrest. Put your hands behind your back and I'll pull my bugs back after you are cuffed. Do you understand?" she demanded. She kicked the flayingly, screaming figure on the ground next to her. "You're next."

"Anything! Just get them off!" the ABB thug demanded.

"Then hands behind your back," Taylor said. Idiot. She finally got his arms and legs trussed up and then turned to the next thug who let her tie him up without a struggle.

'Bastard did not tie me up tight enough.' The sense of glee was not even slightly visible on the first thug's face.

Taylor 'double-checked' his ties, pulling them slightly tighter, much to his frustration. Then back to the second one to double check him also.

'Damn, that's a creepy skitter,' the second thug thought as he saw her sidle sideways.

"Who are you?" the older woman asked. "You aren't a new villain, are you?"

"I just saved you from being mugged or worse and you think I'm a villain?" Taylor asked, nonplussed.

"You are wearing some dark colors to be a hero," the victim noted. "Wouldn't be the first time someone 'saved me' to ask for protection money."

"No, I'm a hero." Taylor was quite firm in that.

"I ain't never heard of you. What's yer name?" the older woman asked in her soft Boston burr of an accent.

"Skitter," she said as she thought of what one of the thugs had thought. "And I just started. Hey, could you call the cops?"

"Can't afford a phone. But that boy had one," she said, pointing at the first thug.

"Thanks." She pulled it out and then unlocked it. Dialing 911, she waited for an answer. "I would like to report an attempted mugging and a citizens arrest. Two men, tied up by a parahuman."

"Where are you located at?" the dispatcher asked.

"Tenth and Bradley, in between Sturmon's Metals and Till's Pawn shop. I'll leave the phone with the victim." With that, 'Skitter' added and handed the phone to the woman and then disappeared into the back alleys.