Worm she s Dead Jim Part Three
DISCLAIMER: Worm, Parahumans, and the characters and settings of Earth Bet (and other places) were created by John "Wildbow" McCrae. I don't own them. This story was written for my own amusement, not for profit. If you are enjoying it, please write and post a review.
ADVISORY: Foul Language. The setting is in Brockton Bay.
Friday:
I awoke, then did another run. I again took my route to the Docks, varying it a bit from the last time, then caught a bus back home in time to shower, dress, then go to school. Unlike the day before and for a very long time, I actually wanted to go to school. The video footage I'd seen the night before convinced me that Sophia was still dead and Emma's and Madison's behavior the day before made me think that they probably hadn't regrouped from losing their enforcer. Unless Emma had one waiting in the wings, I'd probably be physically safe for a while.
I took my seat in home room and looked around. An Empire wanna-be was now sitting in Sophia's seat and daring anyone to dispute his right to sit in it. Emma wasn't there and Madison looked too intimidated to tell him to move. The other Afro-Americans in home room gave a couple of quick glances at the Empire thug seated in Sophia's chair, then quickly looked away, their expressions unreadable.
I wondered where Emma was. I suspected that she was either talking to the PRT or talking to the Cops: I didn't think Zoe had taken her to the dentist. I'd wondered about Sophia's connections to the PRT and Emma's connections to Sophia since yesterday. But whether Sophia had been a Ward or not, Emma's power base had taken a serious blow when Sophia was murdered. I wondered what would happen if the Protectorate's techs started going through Sophia's phones and internet accounts. Nothing good for you, Ems, I thought. I doubted that the PRT would file charges against her, but I was pretty sure that Emma would lose whatever protection her friendship with Sophia had given her.
Class let out and I went to the next one. I didn't see Emma, but then I didn't take that class with her. Some of her fan club was there: they scowled at me and I returned their looks with a shrug.
There were a couple of people from the track team sitting or standing around a table outside the cafeteria. The table had a big jar and a hastily-made poster showing Sophia grinning after she'd won some track meet. I recognized a couple of people from the track team and they recognized me. I wondered what the jar was for, then decided to have a closer look. A couple of the runners' eyes widened when they saw me. They knew who I was and they knew that Sophia had treated me like shit.
I read the poster and an idea came to me. "This is for Sophia's family, isn't it?" I said.
The runner seated at the table nodded and said "yeah."
"It's for her Mom and her sister and her brother," said one of the male runners. "Their folks are hard up."
I was shit at power politics but I had an idea. Sophia and Emma recently started using members of the Track Team to help make my life at Winslow even more hellish. I wondered if there was a way I could short-circuit that.
"You know that Sophia and I didn't get along," I said. An understatement. Sophia treated me like shit. The female runner, a light-skinned girl named Charmaine, blushed. Yeah, you know it, don't you, I thought. "But her mom and her siblings never did anything to me," I said. "I'd like to make a contribution." I dug out my wallet and dropped $15 into the jar.
"Uh, thanks," said the male runner. He looked equally embarrassed. He looked at the other track team members. "Look, uh, Taylor" he said. "You didn't have to give anything. We're really sorry about the crap Sophia did to you. Let's start fresh. We'll spread the word around and try to get the team to lay off on you."
I tried give him my best smile. "Thanks," I said, and hoped that he meant it.
I decided to be daring and went into the cafeteria. I looked over at the Trio's usual table, but Maddy was the only member there. Not that she was eating alone: Julia and some of the Trio's other friends were sitting with her. Maddy shot me a scowl. I picked up a bottle of soy sauce, then smiled and waved at her.
I had been dying to get a shot at the Computer Lab since yesterday. I got my chance after lunch. I found a space by an empty computer, then logged in. I learned I had a big stack of E-mails and wondered what the Fuck I should do with them. My first impulse was to delete all of them, but I suspected that some of them might be school stuff that I might need to know about. I opened my mail window and started going through the junk.
Much of it was what I thought it would be: more hate mail from Emma, Sophia and her friends. There was also some junk mail. I deleted most of the stuff I recognized as junk mail and started plodding through what I thought were school notifications and announcements. Some I kept, most I put in the trash. Winslow's server had three categories for deleting junk mail: a Junk folder, a Delete folder, and a Trash folder. The Trash folder deleted it from your files. I checked the Trash folder and discovered that it still had hate mail from Emma and Sophia. I scowled at those messages and wondered what I should do them. With Sophia at somebody's morgue, I was probably safe from getting any more. On the other hand, with Sophia finally being dead, maybe, just maybe, the PRT would start going through her files and get a real look at what shit she'd been pulling. They hadn't before, but then again Sophia had been alive and useful for fighting crooks and Villain capes. I moved the hate messages I recognized back to the Delete folder: I could always delete them later. I then flushed the rest of the trash.
That bit of housekeeping took about thirty minutes. I reproached myself for wasting my time. The PRT is never going to do anything about Sophia and what she did to you. You're giving those witches free rent in your head, Taylor. I sighed and logged onto Parahumans Online. I then went looking for the forum news about Brockton Bay. I found it, and then started looking over the headlines.
Shadow Stalker's death was still news. The PRT had performed an autopsy but hadn't released a cause of death. That was weird. Usually when a Cape went down in a fight there were wounds and bruising and PHO occasionally provided pictures. But not this time.
There was also an obituary page for Shadow Stalker. I opened it up, then went to the comments section. There were a lot of them. There were a lot of hateful comments: most of them from racists and known trolls. In fact, there had been so many that the Administrator took action and let fly with multiple volleys of COMMENT DELETED and USER BANNED notices.
But not all of them: I read a couple of comments from some users I recognized and was comforted by the fact that they didn't like Sophia either. There's a lot of that going around, I thought. I then looked at my watch and noticed that I had less than ten minutes left if I wanted to find out anything about the guy who killed her. I realized that I'd probably have to log in from home. I read just enough to learn that the PRT was still looking for him, he hadn't been ID'd yet and that a troll I knew was an Empire fan had posted that he wasn't a member of the Empire 88.
I then went on to my next class: Math. Last week I would have shared it with the entire Trio and some of their hangers-on. Today the only member of the Trio in class was Madison, although Julia and some of Emma's and Sophia's outer circle were sitting in their seats. Julia and Marcy scowled at me as I made my way to my seat. I took my seat and class started.
Mr. Quinlan wasn't there. The door opened and Mr. Connors walked over and took his place. Conners was one of the rare substitutes I'd seen teaching class that scared the students. He looked at you and took control: rumor had it that he'd been on the ground during Desert Storm, then fought in the insurgency that followed. In any case, any kid he saw going off-track regretted it, and he noticed things. As far as I was concerned, he saw about as much with his two eyeballs as I saw using my bugs.
He went through roll call, scowling at the names of students who'd cut class. I'd just finished saying "Here!" when he scowled at me and said "Good to see you here, Hebert," before going on to the next kid. The rest of the class tittered and I blushed.
He then called for homework and we passed it forward. I'd actually done mine and buried my worksheet between a couple of the other kids' assignments. Sophia might have taken it out if Quinlan had been teaching that day, but Sophia wasn't there. Connors straightened up the pile without comment.
Most of the math class went off like a math class. Some of the kids looked like they'd been goofing off. About halfway through class, Julia raised her hand and said "Mr. Connors, could I go to the bathroom?".
I watched as Mr. Connors fixed her with a stare and grinned behind my hand as Julia did everything but squirm under his gaze.
"Please, Sir, I really have to go," she said. It looked like she actually meant it. Maybe she did.
"Hall pass," he said, pulling one out of Quinlan's drawer. "I expect you back in her before the end of class."
For once I was able to keep my mind on my subject. Only a tool cut up in one of Connors' classes, and most of the kids knew better.
After a while I could sense that class was nearly over. I looked at my watch and noticed that Julia wasn't back yet. Julia was in for it. This was Connors. Whoever Julia thought she was, the shit was going to fly.
I looked at Mr. Connors. He'd also noticed Julia taking her time. This was not going to be pretty, but I hoped I could see some of it.
I never found out what Connors would have done to Julia. Neither did anybody else. Instead, a couple of the fire bells started ringing, the PA system came on and Ms. Blackwell's voice announced that we were evacuate the school building and assemble on the athletic field.
-xxx—xxx—xxx—
Author's comments:
This story is primarily about Taylor Hebert and what might happen if Sophia Hess was removed from the trio of Taylor's tormentors. It's not a canon Worm story, so deal with it.
I have written (and am still working on) Harry Potter crossover stories. I tend to be up front and label my Harry Potter crossovers as crossovers when the Harry Potter element is important. It was important enough to take out Shadow Stalker but that's all I'm going to say. I will not tip my hand as to how this story will go.
