Taylor had made it back that night, giving her father an explanation that she needed to get out of the house a bit. So she had taken a long walk about. It took a bit to calm him. Especially since her 'grades' were suddenly very good. Too good, she thought again to herself suspiciously. She laid on her bed, staring at the ceiling for a very long time.

'Student of Far Earth?' finally, in an impulse, she telepathed out in the wee hours of that morning.

'Pupil of Earth, I am here,' the mind sent back immediately.

'What did you do to my brain?' she demanded.

'Ah, you have noticed the increase in cogitation and your ability to learn faster than you thought was possible. It appears I was not specifically explicit in my previous explanation. While we corrected your trauma after your 'Trigger Event' we repaired what we saw were serious issues that went back to your treatment during your schooling. We considered this something to 'repair' also, putting your mind at a reasonable level of ability. This would be something that you humans will come to understand in the next few centuries. This level of your mind is necessary for the trials that lay before you.'

'So you brainwashed me?' she asked suspiciously.

The emotion that the Arisian was giving her of great forbearance. 'Quite the opposite. While your mind is now keen and strong, you must learn and discover your own abilities. And then hone your mind ever further. No loyalty has been imprinted upon you.'

Taylor really wasn't sure she believed him.

'We will converse later. Please use your Lens next time, so that it will be easier to have a long conversation. It is not so easy communicating with you until you have further progressed in your mental studies,' Student said to her. It was abruptly gone.

Taylor blinked, then realized she had left her lens under her pillow. But she could still feel her father's sleeping mind- Suddenly she realized what Mentor and Student had said that first time. It only amplified mental powers. She could actually leave the Lens behind in an emergency.

That made her feel much better. Because if it was her own power, then that meant she was not just using a mind reading machine.

Skitter had a grin on her face, not that you could see it under her full mask. She waved to the little robot drone above her in the dark alley that her bugs had spotted. It bobbed and then took off. It was fairly obvious in retrospect, but she must be one of the parahumans that they thought might be the mysterious Pupil of Earth.

And it was known semi-publically that Dragon was looking for the mysterious 'person of interest' that had driven off The Simurgh. Not one mention of telepathy, but she and the Protectorate were definitely looking for her. So she had taken to limiting her telepathy to the range of her tripled bug control (which was over three kilometers out... normally. It varied dependent on her 'feelings'. She had been able to trick her Rider to almost double it again, but left that as another ace up her sleeve.)

Some bugs up the block at the seedy convenience store that the Empire Eighty-Eight 'owned' suddenly went blind and deaf. Skitter blinked behind her improved goggles that were flash resistant and enhanced low light situations. She turned and started to move through the back alleys, being careful of a trap or ambush. Even as she moved, her bugs were moving into the darkness, allowing her to see what was going on fairly quickly as her insects found two people by the cash register. The larger one knocked the smaller one down and started to do something to the teller machine to get it to open.

Strangely, the manager had not been scared, but just mad. Not even surprised.

She did not expect to see the inside of store swallowed up in darkness. So this must be the villain, Grue. Bugs were still sweeping in from blocks around when the darkness started to bulge and move out the back door. This was both good and bad.

There were no innocents to be caught in the crossfire, but it caught Skitter in its inky blackness as she was only twenty feet away. Grue appeared to be a fairly strong young man wearing some sort of helmet, with very little (if any) exposed skin according to her bugs. Skitter had actually had to deal with this issue, as a few enterprising ABB thugs had tried to fight her by wearing fully covering clothing and bee netting that they could pull over their heads.

He did stop in (apparent) surprise, as he suddenly found himself engulfed in a huge swarm of bugs. Now they were both equally 'blind'. Flies worked in groups to lethargically fly through the almost too cold air with long strings of spider silk from little spools of thread in her belt and backpack armor. (The Carbon Longsynth spools were her 'emergency trump' for tying up stronger villains) She directed them to tie them around his wrists and then swing around in front of his torso and then back past his waist, making loops as they flew along through the thick air.

Skitter's grip-textured gloves then grabbed looped strands behind him even as she pulled them tight. A kick to the knees felled him as more bugs started to loop and tie his legs together and his arms to his side. He was very strong and almost pulled his arms loose as he wriggle.

It was a long, five minute struggle until Grue could no longer do much more than wiggle.

"You should really give up before I have to knock you out," Skitter said rhetorically into the cloying darkness. "I'd probably hurt you more than I intended-"

The darkness suddenly disappeared.

"-the hell?"

"God-damn-fuck. I had to run into The Skitter," Grue complained from the ground. "How did you even know I was robbing that place? I made sure that my darkness didn't leak outside." His flexing muscles were only causing the threads to bite painfully into his flesh, so he had stopped.

"It's just Skitter. I was close by when your darkness blinded and deafened my bugs." Bweep-baap-baap. "I would like to report the capture of the criminal named Grue who had been robbing a store. I think. Beaumont and 8th."

She waited for the PRT to arrive (only ten minutes) and then disappeared done the back alley, feeling the hate that Grue was feeling towards her.

That should be enough for the night. She jogged home in a well practiced manner, avoiding anyone spotting her nearly invisible figure. Her father was still asleep as she crept up to her room silently. It took ten minutes to put her superhero gear into the old hard suitcase and slide it back under her bed (and far back). The only thing she kept out was her energy pistol. It was locked down in stun mode, actually requiring her to use some insects to crawl into it and switch it from the safety mode. The little pistol looked like something you would see in an old Buck Rogers show, but far more functional.

Taylor took her Lens out and held it as she lay down in bed. She cast her mind out. Good, Armsmaster was still awake-

The feeling he was giving off were not good.

"Are you sure I'm not needed, Dragon?" Armsmaster said to the person on the viewscreen. Other view screens had newsmen and women talking, while there was a general map of New York State.

"There's not enough time without a teleporter. Legend is on site with me, along with the four local heroes. Ithaca does not have nor need a large super team. They aren't even official Protectorate, you know. But this is their town and they are working with the police to try and find this madman," Dragon explained.

"What's the tally?" he asked in a flat voice.

"Five dead, thirteen wounded and Cornell University has taken millions of dollars of damage. And five minutes until another bomb goes off," Dragon said bitterly.

Dragon was sending her drones out to try and find them, but they were invisible to Taylor's telepathic sense. The large being itself could be sensed, but it was not human. She wanted to spend a moment to puzzle that out, but first she had to find the bomber, then figure out the location of the bomb.

So many active minds, all focused on the time.

But only one of them was satisfied and happy. The woman was still in the school dormitory, watching out the windows like so many other. Outwardly, she looked just as worried about the bomb that was underneath the fountain... only twenty feet away from the nearest PRT troopers and eighty feet from the emergency situation base.

'This is Pupil of Earth!' Taylor telepathed to Dragon and Legend. 'The bomb is in the fountain due north of your location and only eighty feet away!'

Dragon and Legend had both stopped at that, then Legend launched into the sky.

Speakers on the large, quadruped armor snapped out. "All PRT and Protectorate personnel are to report to me immediately!" She then lumbered at a slight angle away. "This is not a drill. We have been informed of a suspect and will be moving out immediately."

"Pupil of Earth? Where is the bomber?" Legend demanded as his dark blue suit made him nearly invisible in the black sky.

'Please wait for the last people to move out of its radius. The bomber only suspects that we have discovered the location of the bomb, which she can trigger at any time,' Taylor explained in the overly bombastic male tone she used for her Pupil persona.

"Everyone is clear. We swept that area for bombs. How did it slip through?" the irate leader of the New York Protectorate half asked himself.

'It is a space-implosion device that crudely makes a gravity point as powerful as the surface of a black hole for a femtosecond. Luckily it is very small and crude, only has the explosive power of two hundred pounds of TNT.'

"Only?" he asked in bemusement.

'Luckily, she seems limited by her supplies. It could be used to destroy continents if used incorrectly,' Taylor sent simply. 'Everyone is clear. She is the Asian girl on the third floor of the girl's dormitory nine hundred feet to the south of you.'

Legend rotated around mid air. "With the blue eyes?"

'You can see that? But yes, that is her,' Pupil of Earth replied in a slightly startled tone. Taylor would have to remember that Legend had super-eyesight. Was that even a power?

The living embodiment of the 'blaster' concept unleashed a fulisade at the totally surprised young woman. She only had a split second of shock before ten stun beams took her and her roommate out.

"Stand away from the windows!" He ordered as he flew up to the dormitory. He slipped in the window. "Pupil of Earth, I hope you have some proof that she was the bomber."

'She is in possession of a computer in her jacket pocket that she can use to trigger it. It is not obviously tinker design, but once Dragon looks at it more closely she can verify that it is not a normal device,' Pupil of Earth explained.

"That will work."

The space-time implosion rocked the area as it unleashed it destructive power.

'I must be off to bed, as I have schooling to attend to in the morning,' Pupil said and then pulled back. She was tired and she did have to get up to start her self study.

Legend frowned at his computer screen, going over everything that they knew of Pupil of Earth.

First the name. It pointed towards a couple of different things. That Pupil felt he was connected to the whole Earth, like a New Age mysticism. Yet it would be the only hint of that philosophy. The second possible meaning is that it was literal, that Pupil was of Earth. But why the distinction, as there were no aliens that he knew of? Too vague to get a good fact out of.

Pupil of Earth was a telepath. The only known telepath on the planet. He had to come to Australia, so his range was smaller than the Earth. Yet he had not mentioned having to travel this last time. Which indicated that he was in the near area. The distance though, that was the problem. Ten miles? A hundred? Hundreds?

Dragon had a note that among the suspected people, that the range could be anywhere from just five miles to over two hundred. The high end was worrying, as his telepathy reading or finding ability was invisible. The bomber had not even realized that she had been found out.

Luckily, Pupil of Earth was able to be surprised. His lack of understanding Legend's own powers indicated that he was not all-knowing, at least. So was unlikely to be just snooping on special Triumvirate business.

With a sigh, he stood up. "Door," he called out.

He stepped through the portal into one of Cauldron's most secure facilities. He nodded to the shimmer as he passed The Custodian. A simple door down the hall allowed entry into a plain conference room, similar to many across the Earth. Or any Earth.

"Good to see you again, Legend," Doctor Mother said in her calm way. "I hope you have something tell us about this impossibility."

Legend nodded. "Well, at least we're able to infer things. Our telepath is not omniscient, as he was surprised by how good my eyesight was. He does appear to be based in North America and probably in the New England area."

Alexandria tilted her head as if to ask a question. "So it's most likely either Two-Gun Tango, Skitter, Rockship or Mettlemore?"

"Mettlemore was killed last week," Legend noted as a clarification.

"So only four new people that were in the range of both events and could be hiding powers," Eidolon said as he through the list. "Only Skitter is a Master."

"Bugs though. And the telepathic power could actually be from some device," the leader of Cauldron intuited.

The Number Man nodded at that, but he was surprised when the last member of Cauldron spoke up.

"I find it unlikely to be a device. The steps to create a mind reading and projection device will take ten years," Contessa said as she mentally winced at the fifty-thousand odd steps. "Which does mean its possible, but that this Pupil of Earth is unlikely to be using it."

"Well, I guess that answers if mechanical telepathy is possible," Legend mused aloud.

That got a chuckle out of them.

"She's being rather cagey, using a male voice mentally." Alexandria was thinking hard about the issue. "Why so paranoid?"

"The Simurgh," Eidolon decided out loud.

"Telepaths do have a stigma attached to them. There have been dozens or reports of different Thinkers pretending to be telepaths for a psychological edge. I'm just glad that the first real one we have seems to be a good guy. Or gal," Legend said, his smile evident in his voice.

"We can't be sure of that," Doctor Mother noted.

"We can't be sure of anything," the leader of the Protectorate noted in a bland voice.

"Dragon is already keeping Skitter under surveillance as best as possible, but her bug control powers make that harder than expected." The female Triumvirate sounded moderately annoyed by that fact.

"And it's possible that he is actually a Stranger-Master combo," the Number Man noted. "We shouldn't be too certain about such a slippery character as Pupil."

"I'm going to direct Armsmaster to make contact with Skitter and confront her on possibly being Pupil of Earth. We'll need to continue our other lines of investigation on other possibilities," Alexandria said firmly.

Everyone nodded at that part.