Chunks of Worm

by VigoGrimborne

A collection of Worm-related one-shots. Some will be AUs, some will be alt-power AUs, some will be both, and some neither. All will have a self-contained story, and I'll be hitting all sorts of different genres and themes. T-rated, though individual chapters may have additional warnings on them, as necessary. This IS Worm, after all.

10. Problematic Methods (part 2)

AU: Problematic Methods (part 2)

The weekend was coming, and it couldn't arrive soon enough. Taylor hated weekdays with a passion reserved solely to be felt by those who would sleep until noon if they had any choice in the matter. Her partially nocturnal lifestyle didn't mesh well with school, and having almost no desire to actually go to school only made it worse. Every weekday morning she was forced to choose; sleep and all that was good in the world… Or all that was wrong with it, aimed at her while she forced herself to stay awake and take the abuse. No contest, at least not in the short term.

Only her need for secrecy and keeping up appearances drove her out to the bus that morning. Between taking Amy back to the warehouse, the delay caused by the Undersiders, and the back-and-forth with Amy at the warehouse itself to ensure the other girl felt safe and as comfortable as possible in her new accomodations, she was working with four hours of sleep at best. Maybe less; she had woken up a few times in the night, her heart pounding. Just seeing Tattletale again was enough to bring up unsettling dreams.

Dreams of being trapped in alleyways littered with bloody refuse, of fighting the Undersiders and Amy being hurt in the crossfire, physically or mentally, of Tattletale laughing and smiling with Emma's smile… No, she hadn't slept soundly at all.

Tattletale would be a problem sooner or later; of that Taylor was absolutely sure, even without the cryptic threat. She pondered the villain all through first period, a devious smirk and painfully kind – or later, just painful – words at odds with each other, floating through her thoughts. Trying to out-think a Thinker while sleep deprived was futile, but she couldn't stop herself. Tattletale was more interesting than algebra.

After first period, her pocket buzzed.

She stopped in the middle of the hallway, bemused, and palmed the circular shape in her sweatpants sitting innocuously against her hip. It was at that point that she realized she had worn sweatpants to school. It was a good thing she didn't care how most of the school thought of her, and that they didn't care about her in return, otherwise she might be embarrassed. More to the point, it was good that Emma and her posse weren't around to notice, point fingers, and mock her.

But they were the same sweatpants she hid her cape phone in while she didn't have it on her, the thick ones she had thought might muffle it if it decided to ring or beep or something. She didn't fully trust it.

It was her phone, and it was buzzing… proving her right to hide it with consideration for it making unexpected noise, now that she thought about it.

She made a beeline for her next class, World Affairs, then casually took it out to look at. There was a little popup at the bottom of the screen, one displaying a familiar lack of appreciation for the rules of the English language.

'Forward- Glory_Girl_Official: U know whre A wnt? Urgent!'

She had set up the connection between her phone and her PHO account the day before. There was a surprisingly robust set of linking options and tools available on PHO itself; whoever ran the site clearly had way too much free time on their hands, or huge aspirations for how essential it would become for the daily life of its users. She wasn't surprised to see she was getting messages forwarded.

She wasn't surprised by what they were about, either. 'Yes. She's safe. Needed some time to herself.' She hit the send button and put her phone to sleep before slipping it back into her pocket.

Just in time, too; Madison came in the door not ten seconds later. Her phone buzzed twice more as Gladly started talking – 'sleep' apparently was not the setting to shut it up but keep it on – but Taylor tuned it out. Not that Gladly was all that interesting…

The class dragged on like nothing else, and Taylor felt eyes on her back almost the entire time. She wished, for the thousandth time, that Madison sat closer to the front of the room. There were a good three rows of desks between them, so it wasn't easy for Madison to mess with her, but neither was it all that hard. Today, nothing happened, but the tension made it impossible for her to relax, even when she planted a mosquito on the girl's head to keep track of her.

"I want everyone to prepare a talking point on how capes have impacted the economy, which will be presented at the start of next class," Gladly said at the end of the period. Half the class was tuning him out already, and the other half was only listening because they couldn't afford to miss an assignment. Taylor was one of the latter; her grade was hovering around a C, and a low one at that. She couldn't afford to blow off his preparation assignment, especially not as it was one she could actually do, so long as she committed it to memory instead of writing it down. Madison couldn't steal what was in her head.

But that didn't mean Madison was powerless. Far from it. Taylor walked out of the room and right into an ambush, though one that nobody observing from afar would recognize as such. Walking a gauntlet of gossiping girls was normal, it was just how school worked. Teenagers would be teenagers. Or so the teachers would say if they ever even noticed.

"God, she looks exhausted."

"Sucking off Merchants all night will do that to you."

"How would you know, Julia? Maybe she's putting out for some other gang. She wouldn't be so depressed if she was using, too. She would just drop out."

"I'm sure that's coming soon enough," Madison snickered. "Look at her, she's barely capable of walking straight."

Taylor found herself walking in a very straight line, just to spite Madison. It was nothing, she was supposed to just ignore their words… but words were meant to be heard. They were hurtful, whether or not she acknowledged them. Real attacks didn't wait for the victim to pay attention before cutting or stabbing something vital, verbal attacks were no different.

But it was only words. As if that made it any better. She passed three of the six girls Madison had rounded up for the taunting, then another two. It was strange that Madison had arranged all of this herself–

One of the girls bumped her, and she stumbled away. She really needed to start bringing a collection of gnats to school specifically for tagging each and every student; the local bug population was ironically too large, cockroaches and beetles making up the vast majority, for that job.

She got halfway to her next class before realizing that her phone was missing from her pocket. The same phone that was periodically lighting up with texts forwarded from 'Glory_Girl_Official' despite it being a school day and Arcadia High having some sort of phone-jammer on the premises.

Taylor had a small panic attack in the time it took her to draft every non-obvious bug in the building – and a fair amount of those she could find outside – into the task of finding the Trio as soon as possible. She managed to keep herself on course for her next class, but the urge to turn around and find whoever had her highly incriminating phone was strong.

Sophia had a peculiar odor to her; Taylor's flies found her first and stuck to her like buzzing glue. She smelled like smoke – not unusual in itself, many students did – and old blood. She was in the gym, pummeling some hapless guy with a basketball of all things… A pickup game. She wasn't doing anything important.

Emma was next; again, smell betrayed her. She was clean, but her shampoo was distinctive and Taylor usually bugged her as a matter of course. She had been tired and not thinking about them today, which was why she didn't already have a bead on her primary tormentor…

She was getting distracted again. Emma was down near the gym, and talking to a gaggle of girls. One handed over a small object – the phone! Emma immediately stuck it in her backpack.

Taylor exhaled loudly. It wasn't safe, but seeing the phone put away was a delay of disaster. Time for her to figure out how to get her phone back.

---

Despite what Taylor had thought earlier, she was now convinced of the exact opposite.

Winslow needed bigger cockroaches.

That was a statement Taylor suspected no non-parahuman student would ever, ever say. But after spending the better part of an hour mustering a force of mostly cockroaches to try and unzip Emma's backpack where it sat under her desk, she had come to the conclusion that they just weren't strong enough in the small numbers she could keep discreet. Chewing through was her next option – after gathering another clump of bugs in Emma's next class – but the bag was nice and made of a thick canvas that resisted chewing long enough for Emma to get away again.

Lunch was spent eating and planning, but the last two classes of the day yielded nothing. There were too many eyes, too few ways to sneak bugs over to Emma, and once they were finally there, too few methods of getting into her backpack. Taylor managed to plant another mosquito on the inside of the bag, to keep track of it, but that was the most she could do.

On the bright side, Emma hadn't touched the phone. Even as she walked out to the parking lot, she was talking on her own phone, not messing with Taylor's.

Then she got into a car and was whisked out of Taylor's range.

Not that Taylor intended to let that stop her. She got on the wrong bus, one that took her close to Emma's neighborhood, and walked the rest of the way to her former friend's house. Luckily, Emma had gone directly home, and while the mosquito was dead, preliminary scouting efforts told Taylor that the backpack was open with her phone still inside.

Taylor circled the block, walking casually, and marshaled a real swarm, away from prying eyes. Emma was in the living room, Zoe was in the kitchen, and Alan was still at work.

A swarm of bugs numbering in the hundreds converged in Emma's room upstairs. There weren't many roaches to use here, but there were termites from the next house over, and flies, and all sorts of other things she could bring up through the house as the minutes ticked by.

The phone was large to her bugs, dense and heavy. It was slick, too, something that slowed the removal. She wrapped beetles around it in a makeshift rollcage and had her flies latch on to them. Each one was miniscule in the face of the combined weight, but she kept bringing flies in, covering the phone-bug-ball in little wings. Larger wings too, when she could get them.

Down in the kitchen, Emma finished her after-school snack – watched by the compound eyes of several dozen discreet flies – and began making her way up the stairs.

It was too soon, too early. Taylor was half a block away, too far to run her real body over and cause a distraction in time. Her beetles were in the backpack. Emma might not be coming for the phone.

She made a split-second decision and forced her swarm to hide. Bugs went en masse to the closet, under the bed, down into the depths of Emma's backpack, anywhere they could run and hide and avoid being seen. The bug ball around the phone untangled itself and dispersed right as Emma entered her room, barely avoiding being noticed.

Emma stuck her hand into her backpack without looking – Taylor resisted the urge to have just one cockroach crawl onto said hand – and groped around for the phone.

"Let's see," Emma murmured to herself, audible to the hundreds of unseen watchers surrounding her. She thumbed at the phone, poking buttons. The screen lit up. Taylor couldn't get enough bugs close enough to account for their bad eyesight, so she was relegated to seeing a blurry mess of a screen, but she recognized the background of the PHO application.

Emma scrolled through something. She squinted at the screen. Her mouth parted a bit. Her eyes narrowed, then widened.

Zoe Barnes, watched by the flies that remained downstairs, stepped out of the house and went to her car. Emma was alone for the moment.

Emma knew too much.

Bugs swarmed from every crack, crevice, and dark place in the room. The doorway was blocked, the window was blocked, Emma shrieked–

Once. Only once before Taylor formed a swarm clone in the doorway, a crude facsimile of a torso, limbs, and head. Said limb was holding up a finger in front of the mouth. "Quiet," she ordered.

Emma clapped her hands over her mouth, dropping the phone, and did a little anxious stepping movement, turning around and lurching away from the door. She was as pale as a ghost, and shaking like a leaf, and all of the other cliche descriptors Taylor always heard for people frightened out of their minds. She was very familiar with them all, after scaring so many people the same way. It was just… It was Emma, this time. Nothing more.

"Skitter?" Emma asked, her voice trembling.

The name… There was something about that name. Taylor had only ever heard it used by the Wards, and thus presumably by the Protectorate. Emma obviously wasn't a Ward, though… Maybe they had released a press briefing or something. It wasn't important now. By name or by description, she had revealed her hand to her worst tormentor.

"You tread where you should not," Taylor threatened. "The affairs of heroes are not yours to pry into."

"I didn't know!" Emma exclaimed. "I didn't steal that phone, someone else did! I took it from them!"

It occurred to Taylor that Emma might not know who she was, despite looking at the phone. The idea was laughable, but at the same time… Emma wasn't crowing about figuring things out, or trying to bargain. She was acting like she didn't know, and Taylor knew that it was hard to act when faced with a swarm of bugs larger than the doorway.

"Did you…" Taylor had her swarm tilt its 'head' thoughtfully. "Who did you take it from?"

"Julia took it from Taylor Hebert," Emma said. "She never has a phone, but she brought one to school today… She must have taken it from… you?" She squinted at the bug clone.

"It was lost and then found," Taylor hurriedly said. A phalanx of larger beetles was wrestling the phone onto their backs as she spoke; having it on flat ground made it much easier to maneuver. "She may have been the finder… I will see what she knows. You will speak nothing of what you saw on that phone, to anyone."

"Well, she's one step away from being a criminal, so you should probably just arrest her and let the Protectorate sort it out," Emma suggested. She had relaxed once she ratted out the 'real' culprit, which made some sense… but she was too relaxed. Taylor had her bugs buzz unsettlingly.

"That is for me to decide, not you," she said harshly. "And you have not explained why you stole the phone from the other girl in the first place. Or why Julia did and gave it to you. Theft is illegal."

"My dad's a lawyer, he won't let you get away with breaking into our house and threatening me," Emma blustered. It was undercut by her flinch when the phone clattered down the stairs. Luckily, Zoe Barnes had driven away, so Taylor didn't have to worry about being noticed by anyone else in the house.

"He might make it more trouble than it is worth," Taylor conceded. She didn't actually intend to try and get Emma arrested; she wanted to take her phone, which was on its way out the back door, and get out without being figured out. Nothing more. "Watch yourself in the future."

She collapsed her pile of bugs, letting a substantial portion land on Emma and eliciting another panicked shriek, before dispersing them all down the stairs. Her real body, her human one, stayed well away; the bugs could take the phone across the block for her. Jogging in to pick it up would be a really stupid thing to do after somehow getting it back without Emma catching on.

Emma, presumably unaware that she was still being watched, took the blankets off her bed, shook them out vigorously, examined the sheets and pillow, and then sat down on the edge of her bed with a shaky laugh. Taylor watched until she groaned and very cautiously fished out a notebook from her backpack and began doing her homework, then dispersed her eyes in Emma's bedroom, too.

---

The warehouse looked much cleaner when Taylor visited that night. Amy had set up a little sleeping bag behind a few abandoned crates and was living out of her duffel bag, but a lot of the refuse and stains Taylor had ignored were gone from the entire warehouse. Even the high ceiling, which raised questions.

"I was thinking," Amy began the moment she noticed Taylor re-locking the side door. "Why the hell does a warehouse have a bathroom?" She stood in the middle of the large, empty space, fiddling with something small and indistinct in her hands. Her Panacea robes were nowhere to be seen, replaced by a modest set of jeans and pale red sweater that struck Taylor as being far too… normal… for one of the country's most well-known parahumans.

"Regulations and people trying and failing to use the building for other things," Taylor said, though she honestly wasn't sure what the exact story behind the bathroom was. Something along those lines, probably. "How is it here?"

"Blessedly quiet, if I keep my phone silenced," Amy replied, crossing the distance between them. The thing in her hands proved to be a phone, if one much sleeker and thinner than Taylor's. "New Wave is looking for me."

"I've told Victoria that you're safe and just need some time to yourself," Taylor admitted. "She's been texting me, too."

"How the hell did she get your number?" Amy demanded.

"I gave her my PHO username," Taylor admitted. "It was that or find out how else she would want to keep in contact."

"Next question, when did you meet her?" Amy asked disapprovingly. "And why aren't you a sad gray stain on the road somewhere?" She shoved her own phone into her jeans and made to sit down, before deciding to stay standing. Taylor had never seen her so twitchy, and she had once seen her in an actual hostage situation.

"It was when you missed a hospital visit because of the all-night drive," Taylor supplied, walking over toward where Amy had set up her duffle bag. The warehouse was uncomfortably bare, now that she was seeing it as more than an empty space to house spiders, who had no use for chairs or couches or other furniture a normal human being would want. "I went to make sure you weren't kidnapped, we met, we talked, we went on a patrol because I was almost certain she would try and arrest me if I didn't go along with her." That was mostly an exaggeration…

But sure enough, it made Amy smile fondly. And sadly, but sad was an emotion she always associated with Victoria, so it was the smile that counted. "She might have," Amy agreed.

"Maybe." Taylor decided to sit down with her back to the wall. The concrete floor was uncomfortably hard and cold through her sweatpants. "But at least she understands that you need some space."

"Yeah," Amy said harshly. "She's probably relieved, too. Doesn't have to be awkward around me if I'm not there. But Carol will tear the city apart until she finds me. I can't just hide here all day, every day."

"Is there something you want to do instead?" Taylor asked tentatively. It felt like Amy was going somewhere with that line of reasoning; the night before, she had seemed perfectly content to find a place to hide and stay there forever, however unfeasible that was. Especially after the near miss with the Undersiders.

"Yes, there is," Amy said firmly. "I want to put Tattletale back in jail, where she belongs."

"You mean a holding cell, she wasn't sentenced to anything yet," Taylor corrected. That was sort of important; Tattletale had an arrest warrant, but Victoria had spent a solid three interrupted muggings explaining the difference–

"Fuck it, you know what I mean," Amy said bluntly. "Don't tell me you want to leave her out there. She threatened you last night, and you just sat there and took it. Why?"

"It was a bad time," Taylor said defensively. "Bitch's dogs were right there, our alleyway was right in front of them, and they might have run you down if I did anything to Bitch. If I didn't do anything to Bitch, then she could have had the dogs hurt you by accident anyway. All it takes is a single flying dumpster."

Amy flinched, and Taylor belatedly remembered a story about Glory Girl, a flying dumpster, and Amy being called in to clandestinely heal the aftermath. "I didn't mean it like that," Taylor amended.

"No, you did," Amy said quietly, shrinking in on herself. She sat down on the ground, her chin on her knees. "I could have run…"

"There weren't any easy ways out, and they would have noticed," Taylor said gently. "I would love to have taken them all down then and there," though she hadn't really considered it at the time, because… well, because she was preoccupied with sneaking Amy through the city, really. And keeping her safe. Attacking someone dangerous ran directly counter to that, and she was trying to be a good hero. Someone who did the right thing.

"But I was holding you back?" Amy asked.

"Well… Yes." She couldn't exactly say otherwise. "But I probably wouldn't have won even if you weren't there. I can't do anything to Bitch's dogs."

"Eyes?" Amy suggested.

"Then they might lash out while they're blind," Taylor said. She hadn't put a lot of thought into countering Bitch, but it was fair to say she was more aware of the danger the other cape posed than she was with, say, Regent. The problem was that Bitch created massive creatures that only obeyed her. Taking her out would remove any control over them, and taking them out was difficult with only bugs. And that was assuming Tattletale or the others didn't interfere to make everything worse.

"I could have put them down," Amy said, staring at the floor between them. "Maybe. Depends on how they work, what Bitch does to them. I can put anyone down if I can touch bare skin. But I can't get close enough to touch the dogs… I saw what they did to Aegis."

"So you're not going to go out there and try to hunt Tattletale down on your own?" Taylor asked, giving voice to a rising suspicion in the back of her mind. Amy was not a happy person, and she didn't have anything else to do, as well as being fully capable and willing to hold a grudge…

"Not without protection," Amy said absently. "I can't go to the hospital without Carol finding me and locking me in my room… I can't go to school because the Wards might just grab me there, or Vicky might. I could do something else."

She looked up, a worryingly enthusiastic glint in her eye. "I could make armor. Like tree bark, but stronger and harder. And a staff, or something. I could grow it. Then I wouldn't get pulped the moment a dog hit me."

Taylor distinctly remembered Amy saying, many times over, that she wasn't going to do anything with her powers except heal. She also had an instinctive aversion to the idea of Amy marching out in cobbled-together armor with a big stick and hunting down any of the Undersiders, let alone the most physically dangerous of them.

"It's just for this," Amy added, as an afterthought. "I can get rid of it after we take them in. It's okay so long as I just make armor. Nothing living, not really. Like topiary, but without waiting. That's all."

"I don't… necessarily think that's a bad idea," Taylor said slowly, trying to think of a way to explain herself without sounding condescending or judgmental. The last thing she wanted was to scare Amy back into her usual shell of cynical bitchiness. "But are you sure you're comfortable bending your rules for this?"

"They're Carol's rules, not mine," Amy said bitterly. "I just won't touch brains or make living things that reproduce. She tacked on all the other ones about messing with plants or animals or doing anything except healing humans. Did you know she wouldn't even let me offer to heal pets once a week?"

"No, I didn't know that," Taylor said.

Amy looked up from the floor, old bitterness etched across her face. "It was a stupid idea, sure, but she didn't say no because it was inefficient or not as good as spending the same time healing actual people. She just didn't like me doing anything except healing people. That was all my power could do that was good, even though healing puppies and kittens and all that crap would be the definition of altruistic. It was stupid."

Taylor was entirely innured to Carol's general bitchiness as told by Amy by now, so she wasn't that surprised. "So you aren't necessarily bothered by doing some other things," she said.

"I'd just be growing some tree bark and taking some iron from the soil to reinforce it," Amy said firmly. "And shaping it. I do more complicated things getting rid of acne. We need to get Tattletale before she does whatever she was taunting you about. Never let the Thinker do what she pleases or say what she wants." She scowled miserably at the wall above Taylor's head. "Should have remembered that the first time around."

"Count me in," Taylor said vehemently, partially because she thought it was a good idea and partially because she was certain she would rather be in the loop on Amy's activities, whether or not she approved of them. Even if it was dangerous, it would be more dangerous for her to go out alone.

"Great," Amy said. "Now, bring me a tree!"

Taylor looked down at her own arms. Still skinny and decidedly not super-strong. "Or you could go to a tree," she suggested.

"Or that," Amy muttered, blushing fiercely as she turned away to grab something from her duffel bag.

"At least you're enthusiastic," Taylor quipped.

"Oh, shut up," Amy grumbled.

---

Two blocks to the South, three ABB members were screaming and swatting at horseflies. A single block to the North, a whole collection of men with shaved heads and baseball bats were running from a swarm of wasps. Taylor suspected the latter had intended to ambush the former… or maybe vice versa. Whatever they meant to do, the three square blocks centered on the park she was currently standing in was now a no-crime zone.

A few dozen paces away from her, Amy was feeling up a tree. Taylor had no other words to describe the way Amy was caressing the bark and muttering to herself. If it was a person, it would be indecent. As it was, it was just sort of funny in an uncomfortable way, and Taylor doubted Amy was aware of how she looked.

Luckily for Amy, nobody was around to see her. Or to do anything worse than see; the last thing Taylor needed was for the entirety of New Wave to come down on her head because Amy had gone out to fondle a tree at night and gotten mugged by pure coincidence.

Not that keeping New Wave's absent healer safe was necessarily the path to avoiding their wrath; Taylor suspected Victoria was running interference for the time being, and by all accounts Mark wouldn't have the motivation to do anything however he felt about things, but she doubted Carol or the other half of the team was happy with the situation. They had yet to make a public statement on the matter – and didn't that feel familiar – but it was only a matter of time and optics.

A figure came to Taylor's attention a good block and a half away from the park. They were of enough interest that she didn't immediately dismiss them, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as they were, and once she got a few bugs on them she noticed the inconsistent tangibility of the quickly-moving figure.

Not a member of the Undersiders, as she had initially feared. A Ward, alone and roaming far later in the night than Ward patrols usually went. No companion on the patrol, no particular interest in what was happening on the streets as they passed below.

Shadow Stalker was not headed directly for the park, where Amy continued to obliviously caress a tree, but she was working her way in their general direction, too close for comfort. Too close for chance.

A simple flexure of her will had a cloud of gnats, flies, and the occasional beetle gathering on the rooftops in Shadow Stalker's path. Sure enough, the Ward turned and made straight for her once she noticed the indistinct shape lurking in her way.

"Skitter," Shadow Stalker said coldly, phasing back into existence a few paces away from the bug cloud. "I've been looking for you."

"I noticed," she had her swarm buzz inhumanly. "Why?"

"Stay the fuck away from Winslow kids," Shadow Stalker all but growled. "It's a shithole, but if you can't tell the Nazis and Merchants from the random civilians, you have no business being there."

So this was about her encounter with Emma… Taylor wasn't quite sure what to make of that, aside from wondering how Emma had gotten into contact with a Ward on such short notice, or why.

"Something of mine was taken," she said, falling back on the story she had tricked Emma into believing.

"Go after the piece of gutter trash who took it, not the person who ended up with it," was Shadow Stalker's blunt reply. "And don't go into houses in broad daylight. It doesn't end well. Mess up too much, and the Protectorate will snap out of it and do something about you."

"That would be bad," Taylor said tentatively, thrown by the Ward's attitude.

"Hell yes," Shadow Stalker agreed, palming her crossbow and fiddling with the loaded tranquilizer bolt. "You're out here making a real difference. They won't let that happen if you cross any lines of theirs, even if nobody sane gives a shit."

"You Wards send a very mixed message," Taylor remarked. The last pair of Wards she had talked to had tried to sell her on joining them. Now one had come to obliquely insult their entire parent organization?

"Fuck the Wards, this is from one vigilante to another," Shadow Stalker spit venemously, swapping the tranquilizer bolt she had just removed from her crossbow for one with a bladed tip. "Keep punting punks to the curb like you have been, but toe their stupid line. I like what you're doing now. You remind me of me."

Taylor wasn't at all sure she considered that a compliment, but it certainly seemed to be one from Shadow Stalker's point of view. That aside, nothing Shadow Stalker had said was wrong. Jaded, far more cynical than she expected, but not wrong. "Your advice is sound," she said.

"You going after the Undersiders again?" Shadow Stalker abruptly asked. She pulled something back on her crossbow, and the sharp bolt slotted into place, presumably ready to be fired. "They're roaches, always getting away."

"Not tonight," Taylor replied. "Don't know where they are, for one thing." Surely Shadow Stalker didn't know either, she would have told the Protectorate… Current attitude and possibly unsanctioned patrol notwithstanding. She was a Ward.

"You find them, give me a call," Shadow Stalker suggested. "I'll help you take them down. Just me, not the Protectorate. They'd slow us down."

Taylor considered that. She considered Amy, feeling up a tree and pulling out a flat chunk of bark that was extruding itself like something out of a weird fantasy novel. She thought about Victoria, who was probably on call for such an occurrence too...

"Give me a number, I'll keep you in the loop," she said carefully. She didn't think she was in a position to turn down help with no strings attached, however disagreeable the personality behind that help seemed to be. Tattletale was worse.

And since she had Shadow Stalker here anyway… She couldn't resist the opportunity, however carefully it might need to be handled. "You have sources in Winslow, to know about the phone," she remarked. Possibly Emma herself; there was something about the way Shadow Stalker had told 'Skitter' to go after 'Taylor' that stank of Emma directly turning it all against her like she did with Blackwell, and such things worked best without a game of telephone in the middle.

"Yeah," Shadow Stalker confirmed. "What of it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Keep them on a shorter leash," Taylor said ominously. "I already looked into the one who found my phone. I do not like what I found."

Shadow Stalker looked pensive at that. Taylor decided to push a little further. "I will be gathering a few of my own informants, and I find the ones most overlooked are often useful. That specific 'gutter trash' is mine now. Keep your informants off her back."

"Well, if you have to stick to a theme of worthless insects, fine," Shadow Stalker muttered. "Get me in on taking down the Undersiders and I'll see what I can do."

"Deal."

---

Taylor tried her best to see Winslow with fresh eyes after her conversation with Shadow Stalker, if only out of paranoia. A Ward had heard about her encounter with Emma and tracked her down within twenty-four hours of the event. Said Ward had ears on the ground in Winslow itself, or buried in the social network Taylor was ostracized from. One of the students was reporting to her, or was her.

It certainly didn't look like Winslow hosted a Ward; it was just as shitty as ever, if not even more so in contrast to what Taylor now suspected stalked the halls. The white supremacists were just as white and racist as before, the Merchants just as alternatingly drugged-out and pushy, the ABB just as vaguely threatening, the popular clique just as horrible. There was no sign of a superhero's presence.

"Maybe I'm looking at it wrong," she muttered as she skirted past her locker on the way to first period a few days after the encounter with Shadow Stalker. It was possible her own struggles made her see Winslow in the worst possible light. Maybe it could be worse.

That dark optimism lasted as long as it took her to hear a rising wave of whispers following in her wake, the telltale sign of a rumor campaign starting up. A new one, given they had played this ploy a few times in the past. The old rumors were all too played out to cause such a stir now.

She slouched to Gladly's class with all the enthusiasm of a sleep deprived, paranoid vigilante who could have learned just as well by setting a few gadflies in Mr. Gladly's hair and leaving school grounds. If it wasn't for Winslow's lip service to attendance laws and Emma's ability to run tattling to get them to enforce them, she would have left already. Or not come at all.

She envied Amy that, at least. The world-famous healer was free to bum about in her warehouse without having to go to school, at least this week. Not that it would last, but even a week's break would have been great compared to waiting for the school day to end in a sleepy haze…

"Friday, the best day of the week that starts with an F," Gladly declared, sweeping into the room like a dramatic teenager. Taylor snapped to attention long enough to pretend she was paying attention. The moment Gladly's eyes passed over her she slouched back down in her seat.

"Group work time!" he continued. "Pair up and pick your favorite non-combatant parahuman. I want you to agree on one, not to each choose one. Be ready to tell the class all about them at the end of the period. Points for originality!"

There was a brief but loud intermission of scooting desks and people calling out to one another, in which Taylor warily declined to participate, instead watching Madison. The chirpy girl was too busy whispering with a few of her hanger-on friends to do anything particularly nefarious, but Taylor had to wonder what they were talking about, and whether it was going to come back to bite her–

"Taylor, let's be partners," Greg of all people declared, startling her. Before she could so much as say yes, he was navigating his desk over to hers, bumping people as he went.

She needed to wake up; sleepwalking through a presentation with Greg might have consequences of the humiliating variety. She blinked rapidly, set some of her bugs to flying complicated aerial dances that at least forced her to think about them, and generally tried to substitute for sleep with pure willpower, with middling success.

"I was thinking we should do somebody from Brockton Bay," Greg began, completely oblivious to her lack of interest or energy. He provided enough for the both of them, tapping the eraser of his pencil erratically against his desk as he spoke. "There are a few really cool noncombatants in California, but we have the best one here."

"Parian?" Taylor asked, trying to remember if Brockton Bay had any rogues besides the firmly neutral cloth-controlling Master. She couldn't think of any–

"What, no, she just does puppet shows," Greg objected. "Panacea, I mean. She's not a rogue, but Mr. G. only said noncombatant, so she counts."

"Right, Panacea," she said slowly. This conversation had veered from normal Greg blathering to something potentially hazardous way too fast for her liking. "Won't everyone be doing her, though? We should pick somebody else."

"Maybe," Greg conceded. "But we could do present-day Panacea. There's this whole thing going on with her recently, and I'm following all of the threads on it. Did you know she hasn't been seen in days?"

"No…" Taylor said. "Really?" She tried to sound intrigued, though it came out with an aborted yawn that made her jaw hurt. "What's happening with her?" Maybe Greg could give her a summary of what the average cape nerd knew about recent events, and in the process let her know exactly what she shouldn't know and thus shouldn't accidentally blurt out.

"Yeah, really," Greg said enthusiastically, flipping his pencil around to point at her. "It's weird. She hasn't been kidnapped because Glory Girl is acting like everything is normal and fine. But she hasn't been seen at school or in the hospital or even at home, and usually she's pretty obvious to anyone actually looking for her. New Wave is changing up their patrol patterns, cape-spotters have seen them everywhere these last few days, but they haven't said anything. Not even that she's fine, it's total radio silence."

"They must not be that worried, then," Taylor suggested. "If she was in danger, they would be doing something more than patrolling new areas of the city."

"If Panacea was in real danger, the Protectorate would sic their Thinkers on the problem and then send in Eidolon," Greg said confidently. "You don't let the bad guys pick off the best healer in the world, that's basic tactics. But nobody knows where she is or what's going on."

"Sounds like a mystery," Taylor said dully. The idea of Eidolon or somebody else that important coming for Panacea wasn't that ridiculous, but it hadn't happened yet and didn't seem likely to happen in the immediate future. Either they didn't know she was missing, or they did know and the same Thinkers Greg had mentioned were good enough to let them know she wasn't actually in any real danger.

Besides, Taylor couldn't remember the last time anyone had come to Brockton Bay to make things better. Why would they do so now?

"A mystery we can do our presentation on," Greg pressed on, scribbling something in his notebook. "Is she sick? Missing? Going villain? Tired of the burden of saving people? Or is she being held for ransom and New Wave are keeping it quiet because she'll be killed if they tell people?"

"Not that," Talyor interjected. "Who would do something that stupid?"

"Plenty of villains are stupid," Greg said absently. Then he looked up, paling slightly. "Uh, no offense."

The buzz of talking around them faded away. Taylor was no longer struggling to stay awake. Instead, she was struggling to not react. Outside, beyond Winslow's decrepit walls, cockroaches ran in panicked circles while centipedes writhed worriedly. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked, her voice deceptively steady.

"Nothing," Greg half-whispered. "I just… It's not… I heard you were maybe henching for somebody. It's cool, it's cool, I wasn't going to say anything!"

Henching. Working for a villain. Not that she was a supervillain, just that she was getting paid by one. "Who?" she muttered.

"They didn't say, just that you were so desperate for money…" he muttered back, refusing to meet her gaze. His eyes lingered on his pencil as he nervously twirled it between his fingers. "Is it true?"

That… didn't quite sound like her identity had been leaked. It has a vicious, demeaning edge to it that she was far more familiar with. One that came from before her powers, before she almost failed to be a hero and landed in her current guilty, muddled state of affairs.

"After all the shit that's been said about me in this school, you decided to believe that?" she demanded, her panic dissipating into a cautious unease. This could be salvaged.

"So it's not true?" he asked, leaning back in his chair.

"No, not at all," she said truthfully.

"Oh… good?" He smiled awkwardly at her. "I thought it might be that new bug cape, and after the attack last night I was worried you might get caught up in all of that."

"Attack?" she asked. "Wait, bug cape?" she belatedly added, feigning ignorance. "What do you mean?" She hadn't attacked anybody, not in a way different from the muggings and robberies she had been stopping almost every night this last week.

"Okay, everybody! Quiet down!" Mr. Gladly stepped up onto his desk and clapped his hands until everyone was looking at him.

Taylor looked his way, but she was not done with this conversation. "What attack?" she whispered.

"Three guys got taken to the hospital last night," Greg whispered back as Mr. Gladly selected the first group to present. "They were all really badly poisoned from a bunch of spider bites. Word on PHO is there's a bug cape in town, but nobody knows what their deal is."

Taylor nodded and feigned interest in the two clearly stoned guys shambling up to the front of the classroom to present. Outside, out of sight of prying eyes, she had one of her spiders bite one of her cockroaches, but not release any venom.

The cockroach was fine, aside from the puncture wound. Just as she had expected. She never let her spiders – or any other venomous bugs – use their venom. Not on simple criminals. Not since making that threat in the bank, and even then it was just a threat.

This was not good.

---

"It's really interesting that you have this level of fine control," Amy said later, one finger on the back of a spider and another on Taylor's wrist. The little red bite mark faded away as she spoke. "This is the sort of thing the spider is barely aware of on its own. But you're right, you can get it to use venom or withhold it at will. Why ask me?"

"I've been keeping my insects from using venom the last few weeks," Taylor explained. It was getting dark outside the warehouse, and she would need to head home soon to be back before her dad got home from work, but she had time to explain, at least. "But apparently word on the street is a few thugs almost died of insect venom last night." Word on the digital street Greg frequented, anyway. She had been forced to dig through PHO's more fanatic sub-boards to find any mention of the supposed injuries, but she did eventually find the thread in which it was discussed. There weren't any more details than he had given her, but it was good to know he wasn't making it up. If it was a lie, it came from someone else.

And that just made her think of the rumor apparently working its way through Winslow. A petty thing, maybe, only dangerous because it hit close to the truth. She could see where Emma might have gotten the inspiration to claim she was a villain's henchwoman, though. Visiting her as Skitter and claiming the phone she had stolen from Taylor probably put the idea in her head.

"That's nothing," Amy scoffed. "Just idiots claiming whatever they think they can get away with. Parahuman brutality, in this case. It won't get them out of trouble, but it makes them feel like they might have a chance."

She volunteered in a hospital and generally fraternized with heroes, so Taylor was inclined to trust her opinion. "That's a relief." The last thing she needed was something tainting the good work she was trying to do.

"Yeah…" Amy wrung her hands nervously. "Can you help me with something?"

Taylor sent her volunteer spider scuttling out of the warehouse and casually brushed Amy's hand off her wrist as she stood. "Probably. What do you need?"

"Backup?" Amy asked. She glanced over at the jumble of wooden shapes by her makeshift bed. "Not like that. Not as… Skitter."

"I don't accept that as my name," Taylor said firmly. She didn't have a name yet, and no placeholder from the Protectorate would suffice. Not one that sounded so vaguely menacing, at least.

"Then come up with a better one before everybody else does," Amy shot back. "I was texting Victoria. She wants to meet. Just for a little while, she specifically said she wouldn't be trying to drag me back home. I was thinking a normal friend being there with me would help convince her I'm not in danger."

It took Taylor a moment to parse that logic out into something understandable. "You do remember Victoria already knows you're staying with me, my cape persona, right?" Victoria knew the cape, but Amy wanted her to show up as her civilian self. Amy had never seen Taylor unmasked.

"As a show of good faith," Amy said. "You don't have to, but it would go a long way to getting New Wave off my back if they had-"

"Leverage?" Taylor cut in. "Over me? By knowing my identity. No."

"Okay." Amy didn't seem all that bothered by her refusal. "Just so you know… I do know what you look like on the inside. So it's not like I don't know you."

"You'd have to touch every girl in the city to find me with that, though," Taylor shot back.

"Every unpopular girl at Winslow." Amy crossed her arms. "I'm not going to, though. It was just a suggestion."

"I can come in costume," Taylor offered. She would have had no problem unmasking to just Amy if she asked, but she wasn't going to offer and that wasn't what was being discussed. "Lurk nearby, ready to run interference."

"Could you put up one of your creepy bug bodies?" Amy requested. "I'm meeting her tonight, and I get to pick the location, so we can do it somewhere secluded."

"When tonight?" She needed to at least show her face so Danny didn't know she was gone.

"Ten," Amy clarified.

"I'll be there." It was just going to be a meeting with Victoria.

An awkward meeting in-person with a flying brick who could broadcast absolute terror or adoration, and who Amy had a crush on. Who was likely to in turn be speaking for the superhero family searching for Amy, and Carol in particular.

Just a meeting with Victoria. Taylor wondered when even a relatively good day at school and talking to heroes had become more nerve-wracking than stopping crimes en masse.

---

Taylor shouldn't have been surprised Amy chose the same park that held her favorite tree. It might have been the only clandestine meeting place the squeaky-clean hero knew. It was a little less empty at only ten at night, but a dozen separate swarms of annoying gnats drove away the ABB guys loitering around before Amy ever came within a block of the place.

They waited there, Amy on one of the cleaner wrought iron benches and Taylor tucked away in an alley behind a dumpster that didn't attract many bugs, meaning it was mostly clean. An ominous mound of bugs loitered purposefully under the bench, ready to move out and form up into an elaborate facsimile once Victoria arrived. Or to explode into a cloud of biting, stinging distraction if anyone else came. Amy said she had been very clear about Victoria coming alone or not at all.

It was a little bit too much like a hostage situation for Taylor's liking, albeit one where Amy was holding herself hostage. But it was Amy's plan, and for all of the crap that regularly rained on Taylor's life, family problems beyond distant neglect were not within her realm of experience. She had to trust this was the right way to go about things, at least for now.

When Victoria came, she came from above. The gnats running a perimeter in the air twenty feet off the ground caught her entrance, some of them instantly dying on impact with her descending shoes. She landed a short distance from the bench and instantly, if unknowingly, picked up a few miniscule hitchhikers to give Taylor an idea of where her limbs were at all times.

She was alone, at least on the ground. In the air… Taylor couldn't see anything through even the best of her bug eyes, and she wasn't physically in position to look up, but Amy wasn't saying anything about Victoria breaking their deal.

"Ames," Victoria said in a low murmur. "You're here."

"You didn't bring anyone, so yes," Amy retorted. She remained seated on the bench. Taylor slid her mass of bugs out from under it, pulling them up on top of each other to form a precarious humanoid shape. "Do they even know you're here? Can't imagine Carol willingly let you go alone."

"Yeah, see, about that…" Victoria said. Amy tensed up. "I'm alone, I promise. She and aunt Sarah made me promise to keep them on call, but the phone is muted so they can't say anything. Just listen." She held something out, presumably the phone in question. Taylor moved a single gnat onto it to have another reference point.

"Well, good," Amy huffed. "What do you want?"

"To make sure you're safe?" Victoria asked. "I mean, I know you've got somebody looking out for you," her head turned to face Taylor's bug proxy, "but that's not enough to keep you totally safe. Not you, not once people know you're missing. New Wave is trying to keep it quiet so the gangs don't get any bright ideas, but that's not going to work for long."

"In some circles it is already seen as suspicious," Taylor volunteered, her eerie voice loud enough to be heard over the phone. If Greg and the PHO cape-spotting crowd had already caught on to Amy's absence, anyone might know by now.

"I'm not going to get kidnapped," Amy said huffily.

"Not if you come home now," Victoria pressed. "I know I screwed up by telling mom, and maybe in how I reacted myself, but you need to come back. We'll be better."

"You'll try," Amy said bitterly. Her hand gripped the bench arm, far more tightly than before. "You will. Carol… No. She won't. This will just make her worse. I'm not doing it."

"Mom asked if I could let her talk if this came up." Victoria held out the phone. "You really don't have to, but whatever you want you know she's never going to give up without getting to say her piece at least once…"

Amy stared at the offered piece of technology in much the way she might have stared at a gun pointed at her head. But she didn't say no. "Put it on speakerphone," she sighed.

A tinny click emanated from the phone as Victoria's thumb reluctantly tapped it. "You're on, mom. Don't–"

"Skitter, stay the hell away from her!" A brash, aggressive woman warned over the phone. Taylor had never heard Carol Dallon in person, but the voice perfectly matched her expectations. It was the sort of no-nonsense tone that perfectly fit a hero warning a villain before engaging in deadly combat.

Not exactly what she wanted to hear from a mother addressing her daughter. Taylor hoped her presence wasn't going to ruin what might have been a good talk or even a reconciliation. It was too late to pretend she wasn't here.

"Talk to me or don't talk at all," Amy said, her voice deceptively calm.

"You are going to come home right now," Carol growled. "I'm going to have that bug criminal arrested for kidnapping a dangerous parahuman–"

She was cut off by a loud clack from something on her end of the call, and then a loud, harsh electronic buzzing and muffled yelling.

"Disregard that," a much more composed woman said. "New Wave is not looking to press any charges or arrest anyone helping you stay safe, Amy. Not so long as that's all they're doing."

"I hope you see why I'm not coming back, no matter what you say," Amy bitterly replied.

"I see exactly why," the woman Taylor assumed was Sarah – Lady Photon – said soothingly. "We're… working on it."

"Really?" Amy scoffed. "That was the most blatant I've ever heard her."

"It's a work in progress," Sarah conceded. "You're welcome to stay with my side of the family until we get her sorted out."

"So she knows where I am and can stalk my every waking moment? No thanks." Amy shoved herself up from the bench, her movements stiff and restrained. "Just… leave me alone. All of you."

"Pushing yourself away isn't going to help anyone," Sarah warned. "But I understand. We'll give you space so long as nothing changes. Victoria, you can hang up on us now." Someone said something in the background, too muffled to be heard. "Carol, think about what you just said and exactly why I am not relaying it!"

Victoria put the phone away. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't think she would be that bad."

"You never do," Amy said.

Victoria flinched. "No," she said slowly. "I guess I don't. Didn't. How are you?"

"I'm fine," Amy grumbled.

"She has a warm place to sleep, access to food and water, and is not around anyone who would do her harm," Taylor supplied. She didn't quite know where Amy was getting her food; she couldn't keep tabs on her during the day. A few fast food wrappers in the warehouse on occasion pointed to her doing fine on that front.

"Sneaking into hospitals to do some down-low healing?" Victoria asked.

"No," Amy said shortly. "I'm… taking a break. From that too."

"Good." Victoria rose into the air, her shoes leaving the grass. "Mom kind of ruined this, so… we can talk later?"

"Later." Amy watched wistfully as her sister flew away. Then she turned to Taylor's swarm. "I need to hit something."

"That can be arranged." They needed to test her armor anyway. She could tag along while Taylor confiscated a few guns, and once they were disarmed she could try her hand at subduing them.

---

Welcome, Bug.

PHO: Messaging

-Private

-Past messages

-Sort by: Recipient

-Glory_Girl_Official

Glory_Girl_Official: U know whre A wnt? Urgent!'

Bug: Yes. She's safe. Needed some time to herself.

Glory_Girl_Official: Is A safe? Rlly? Cuz mom is gng crazy. About her & 2.

Bug: Her telling me I'd be arrested for kidnapping a dangerous parahuman and not, you know, her daughter, didn't count as crazy? And this was a few nights ago… I thought New Wave was backing off?

Glory_Girl_Official: Lwyr tlk. To scare u. Doesnt hlp shes a bitch. This, though. U been poisoning ppl? Not cool

Bug: That wasn't me.

Glory_Girl_Official: Srry, need more than that. Proof?

Bug: When was the last attack? And where?

Glory_Girl_Official: Nt hw this wurks. Alibi fr lst nite first.

Bug: Spent last night (10 PM to 3 AM) doing stuff with Amy. She can vouch.

Glory_Girl_Official: (Wants to send an invitation to user KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565 to join the private message board. Do you agree?)

Bug: …

Bug: What is this?

Glory_Girl_Official: A's secret PHO.

Bug: Oh. You're sure that's her?

Glory_Girl_Official: Yup!

Bug: (Send invitation to KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565 confirmed)

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Vicky, I told you never contact this account. I have a phone number and a verified account here. There is no reason on earth for you to ever acknowledge this one's existence.

Glory_Girl_Official: Ur just mad I know about ur secret love.

Glory_Girl_Official: Srry, bad wrd choice. Mnt of music. Where were u last nite?

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Out. Why?

Glory_Girl_Official: U both need 2 lighten up. Were u with Bug?

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Yes. I repeat, why?

Glory_Girl_Official: Where?

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: By the docks. Within sight of the water. Want an address? Because I'm not giving one.

Glory_Girl_Official: No, thats good. Bug attack poisoned two on other side of town at 11 PM lst nite. Bug's range not that big. Alibi.

Bug: Told you. I don't use the venom. Too likely there will be complications.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Like rotting a dick off.

Bug: Exactly. So that attack, and the others where guys are claiming to be sick afterward? Those aren't me.

Glory_Girl_Official: Bad time for bugs to take you as inspiration… Mom's not going to believe it.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Who are you and when did you knock my sister out and take her phone?

Glory_Girl_Officlal: Peer pressure demands I type like you two bookworms. I was feeling outnumbered.

Glory_Girl_Official: Also, just got home. Not flying and typing at the same time anymore.

Bug: Don't text and drive. Or text and fly. Someone could get hurt.

Glory_Girl_Official: Lot less traffic up here. Anyway… Sorry for accusing you. Thought you might be venting on some hapless goons and got carried away. We've all been there.

Glory_Girl_Official: So… 'stuff'? (~_^)

Bug: Amy wants to go after Tattletale.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Way to throw me under the bus.

Bug: It was that or innuendo.

Glory_Girl_Official: Like, help you go after her?

Bug: Us both. And Shadow Stalker. And you?

Glory_Girl_Official: I'm invited? Yes! PRT know?

Bug: No, just Stalker. Not sure about her… But we need all the firepower we can get once we find them. Tattletale, Regent, Grue, Bitch, Bitch's dogs. Probably need to fight them all to get her. Once I find her, anyway.

Glory_Girl_Official: I can hold off one or two of her dogs indefinitely, but any more and you're going to have a problem. Plan around that and I'm in. Don't want to be a chewtoy.

Glory_Girl_Official: Hope your plan also involves Amy far from death by slobber?

Glory_Girl_Official: Amy?

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Sorry, was distracted. I'll be ready.

Glory_Girl_Official: Not safe. Ready. Not filling me with confidence here, Ames. I'm still in, though. Gotta smack that bitch one for the shit she did in the bank.

Glory_Girl_official: Got a date or time?

Bug: Probably short notice. Really short notice. Not going to rat out their hideout, probably not in use anymore anyway. When I find her.

Glory_Girl_Official: Let me know and I'll be there.

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---

In the end, it wasn't any amount of careful planning or clever searching that brought Taylor within sensing distance of Tattletale again. It was a completely unrelated necessity. Specifically, that of finding crimes to foil and Amy practice targets to wield her staff and lackluster fighting skills against.

Amy had taken to coming with Taylor on some of her nightly patrols, and Taylor in turn had taken to roaming about, stopping all of the crime in an area and then keeping her bugs dormant and out of sight while she changed location, before starting up again in a new place with new criminals who had heard she was elsewhere if they knew anything at all.

This involved roaming the city basically at random, to avoid establishing a pattern the more observant gang members could use to avoid her. On this particular night, it brought her within range of something more than a mugging or a drug deal.

"Something up ahead," she relayed to Amy as she moved toward the oddity at the edge of her range. "Gunshots," which Amy could probably hear on her own, "and dogs. Lots of dogs barking. Men moving around… Bitch." Bitch had brought a whole pack if the number of dogs Taylor was noticing was any indication. The two big dogs she was currently using were knocking a few thugs around in a basement, one with an odd structure in the floor.

"Dog fighting ring," she concluded as she moved more discrete insects into the building. Most of the dogs weren't enhanced or doing anything useful, so they weren't Bitch's to start with."Undersiders raided it," because there were people on the floor groaning and the Undersiders didn't run such operations, "Bitch here for the dogs. Grue, Regent, Tattletale not in the main room." Not with the cages. But there was a back room with a closed door her ants were currently bypassing.

"And?" Amy asked impatiently. "Is it just her or are they all there?"

"Checking…" Taylor relayed. She was only sending a single ant in at first; if Tattletale was in there anything that looked like intelligent action would alert her for sure. Letting the ant do what came naturally might not set her off. In this case that meant wandering into the room, scenting the floor for crumbs of sustenance, feeling vibrations but not moving to a good vantage point because what did ants care about distant thunder?

A single ant did not make for useful vision or hearing; she usually relied on clusters of bugs for that. But one ant was enough to sense light and darkness and to notice that there were things moving in front of light sources and casting moving shadows.

"Somebody else is there." She risked a few more ants, sending them scuttling discretely to the corners of the room, right into the few stable patches of shadow her first ant had noticed. From them she could get a better idea of what was in the room.

A billowing film of shadow up against one wall. Two figures outside the pool, one poking at something on the covered wall. One figure trailing shadow from his hands. A bit of wall swung open.

"They're all there, opening a safe," Taylor concluded. Meanwhile, Bitch was laboriously dragging a single dog cage out the back door, to a van… "They're here for the money and the animals. They won't leave until they have both.".

"Let's go get them," Amy growled.

"Reinforcements first." She didn't collect those phone numbers in order to not use them. They had time. The dog fighting ring didn't have any obviously blaring alarms, and nobody was moving urgently. It would take time to empty the safe, time to move all the dog cages, and then more time to drive away. If they did leave her range, well… She had a way around that.

She had already moved a squadron of mosquitos into the van, down below the seats. One sacrificial mosquito had its wings and limbs bitten off by a native bug, leaving it alive for the moment but utterly incapable of movement. A little tracker she would recognize by its utter disability if it came into her range again.

"I've got Vicky, she says she'll be here in two minutes," Amy said, her phone up to the side of her wooden helmet. "Shadow Stalker next."

The Undersiders didn't know it, but they were about to be ambushed.

---

Shadow Stalker arrived last, ghosting down from a higher rooftop to land on the one Taylor had picked out for their meetup spot. She made good time for a hero without flight, a bare ten minutes from receiving the call.

"Where are they?" she demanded the moment her feet solidified on the ground.

"Loading a bunch of dogs into a van," Amy replied. She stood a good few feet away from Victoria, who floated with her feet just off the roof. Both were keeping their distance when it came to the swarm proxy Taylor had set up on the roof to speak for her.

"Good." She fit a cylinder-headed tranquilizer bolt to her crossbow. Her mask hid her face, but the pale, impassive woman's visage on its front seemed disapproving. "Plan?"

"Strike fast, strike hard," Taylor buzzed. "I'll disable Regent and Grue, Victoria will take Bitch, you and Amy hit Tattletale."

"If everything goes right they'll all go down before they can do anything," Amy explained.

"Never gonna happen," Shadow Stalker said dismissively. "You'll be lucky if one of the four goes down before something goes wrong."

"We know." Taylor hadn't been a hero for long, but she already knew better than to think their opening tactic would actually succeed. "Which Undersider are you most comfortable fighting one on one?"

"Grue. I put him down once, I can do it again." She shrugged her shoulders. "Bitch isn't anything special without her dogs. Regent can be a pain in the ass but if he can't run he's screwed. Tattletale is a Thinker. I can take any one of them."

"I can handle Regent or Bitch's dogs if I get in close," Amy volunteered.

"But that's dangerous so the dogs are mine," Victoria added.

"That leaves me Tattletale. Or Grue, if you need help. His power is worthless against mine." She might be able to take them all down on her own with the element of surprise, but Grue was the least effective against her compared to everyone else. He could blind them, but being blind did nearly nothing to her.

"Got a plan for the mouthy bitch?" Shadow Stalker asked. "I heard she put Glory Girl down on her own last time."

"Yeah." Victoria smiled dangerously. "I've been thinking about it. Either we all tell each other our darkest secrets ahead of time so she can't use them against us, or something else."

"I don't give a shit what she can tell me about any of you," Shadow Stalker announced.

"My secrets are all out," Amy said bitterly. "I've got nothing to fear."

"Not to brag, but I genuinely don't think there's anything about me she can use against us," Victoria admitted. "But let's assume she does have something that could tear us all apart if we heard it. I've still got a plan for that…"

---

The street was quiet for the moment. Two of the three street lamps were broken, and the third one flickered fitfully. The industrial buildings on either side of the street were all dark and presumably empty.

A white van idled in an alleyway, hemmed in on either side by graffiti-covered brick walls three stories tall. A bulky young woman in a dog mask was busy hauling cheap wire crates into the back of the van, each one containing a snarling, snapping dog. More dogs waited inside the van in their own cages, and two uncaged dogs followed at her heels.

"I'm not built for manual labor," Regent complained as he helped Grue haul out another, much larger cage. Tattletale followed them out and shut the door behind them, a nondescript backpack slung over her shoulder.

"You're built for the couch and controller," she agreed.

"Where I belong," Regent said longingly.

They joined Bitch at the back of the truck. Tattletale slung the bag in on top of a crate, Hellhound helped Regent and Grue get the final crate in, and they shut the van's back door.

"Now," Taylor spelled out with cockroaches in three different locations.

A crossbow bolt sprouted out of the back of Grue's left shoulder, digging into his jacket. Two figures leaped down from the rooftops on either side of the alleyway, one floating as a mist and the other flying. Three separate swarms of bugs buzzed into view from down the street, moving at a quick walking pace. A figure in wooden armor followed at a jog, her staff in hand.

"Fuck!" Grue yelled, pitching forward to lean against the van. He immediately flooded the area with his power, black smog jetting from his hands, covering Regent and most of Tattletale immediately. Bitch ran away from his cloud, and her two uncaged dogs started growing, their flesh rippling and bones jutting outwards.

Shadow Stalker phased back into her solid form on the ground and immediately fired another crossbow bolt into the mist where Grue had been. She nocked a third bolt, but by that point Bitch's dogs were bounding out of the growing smoke cloud, both running right for her.

Glory Girl dropped on the first like a meteorite, driving it into the ground with her feet. The second tried to bite her, but she smacked its head aside.

Meanwhile, Amy and the bug swarms converged on the front of the van. Amy smashed the driver-side window with the butt of her staff, then reached in to unlock the door. The bugs continued on, swarming down either side of the van to completely block that way out of the alley. The other end was already covered in a huge swarm, the biggest of the three.

It had been less than thirty seconds, and the Undersiders were already trapped, partially blinded, and on the defensive. Grue wasn't down yet – the tranquilizer must have stabbed into his jacket, not his flesh – but he was in no position to fight back. Not when Shadow Stalker's second shot had winged his side with a tip that was decidedly not a tranquilizer.

Bitch's dogs continued to try ineffectually to bite Victoria, who flew above their lunges and continued to batter their heads every time an opening was presented.

Amy, now in the driver's seat, pocketed the keys and killed the engine. Grue's smoke continued to spread through the alleyway, making visibility more and more of a problem for everyone but him and Taylor.

She knew where they all were; her bugs were spreading just as rapidly as his smoke, making themselves unobtrusive as they hid themselves in the nooks and crannies of costumes. Regent was feeling his way along a wall, and would soon walk right into one of the swarms she had on either side of the van. Tattletale – who was noticing and squishing too many of her bugs to get a good read on – was trying to get out of the fog, but moving cautiously. Probably because the last time she had seen Bitch's dogs they were in the direction she was going, and getting accidentally stepped on might be fatal.

Bitch was the only one who had made it out of Brian's blinding smoke. She was met with a crossbow bolt in the meat of her upper arm, but she gritted her teeth and charged toward Shadow Stalker anyway. One of her dogs, now the size of a small car in its own right, saw her and attempted to turn around. Glory Girl slammed it into the side of the alley hard enough that a few chunks of rubble fell from above.

Amy made her way through the insect swarm blocking the side of the van, the bugs parting before her as Taylor let her through. She held a spider in her off-hand, and though she was blind in the smoke she could feel the spider directing her forward like a compass.

She found Regent like that, and was forewarned enough to jab him in the stomach with her staff before he could do anything. He doubled over and a moment later she dropped her staff, presumably because he made her hand spasm, but she just reached down, found bare skin, and put him out for the count with a touch.

Tattletale emerged from the smoke just as Shadow Stalker clocked Bitch in the back of the head with an armored gauntlet. "Hey, Gloryhole! You keep good company!"

Glory Girl turned, caught sight of her, and grinned savagely.

"You know the drill, down before I pop your bubble above the angry mutant dogs," Tattletale called, pointing her pistol at the floating heroine.

Glory Girl tapped the side of her head mockingly. "Can't hear you!" she yelled.

Tattletale's confident smile faltered. "You can still see the gun aimed at you," she said, shaking it for emphasis.

A crossbow bolt took her in the back of the leg. "H- shit!" she barked, collapsing to one knee. Behind her, Amy emerged from the smoke. Glory Girl dove forward, twisting to fly between both of the snapping dogs, and the gun fired. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up on shaky feet.

Shadow Stalker jabbed Bitch in the back with another tranquilizer bolt, and the burly girl collapsed. Tattletale turned to point her gun at the new threat, swaying hazily as the tranquilizer in her leg began to take effect–

Amy thumped her in the back of the head with her staff. The blond supervillain fell, and a hand to the back of her neck ensured she didn't get back up.

There were still two superpowered dogs and an injured Grue to deal with, but Taylor was pretty sure this fight was over. Victoria was already back to dealing with the dogs, slamming their deformed heads together as she made a mockery of their attempts to get at her in the narrow alleyway. Shadow Stalker, on the other hand, stalked into the smoke, feeling around blindly for Grue. He had stopped moving – but not breathing, of course – and was slumped over by the back of the van.

The dogs began to slow, and Taylor remembered what tended to happen to them once Bitch's power wore off. "You'll need to dig the actual dogs out," she reminded Victoria and Amy. They had both removed their earplugs as soon as Tattletale was out; fighting deaf had to be an uncomfortable experience. Taylor wouldn't know; she had intended to just not listen if Tattletale began talking – it was still a strain to understand the noises her bugs heard – but it never came up.

"Leave that to me," Amy said confidently. The dogs had stopped moving entirely, sprawled out partially on top of each other as a result of their continued efforts to attack Victoria.

In just a few minutes the Undersiders were all lined up on the pavement behind the van, unconscious. The two dogs were laid next to Bitch, and Amy made sure none of them would be getting up unexpectedly.

"Time to call the Protectorate," Shadow Stalker said. She moved quickly, like she was still hopped up on adrenaline from the fight.

"Just did," Taylor told her. The operator on the other end of the line was asking questions about who she was now, but they had the location, so she hung up. "Didn't say who, but they will know I was here. You?"

"I'm not supposed to be here," Shadow Stalker replied. "Panacea, do they show marks from my bolts? Cuts, tranquilizers in their blood, that sort of shit?"

"I burned out the chemicals and replaced them with my own," Amy said absently. "Fixed up Grue's injury, too. But they all saw you."

"I wouldn't count on Tattletale holding her tongue, not for your sake," Victoria suggested. "She might try to blackmail you with the lie or something."

"Fine, I'll stick around and take the lecture," Shadow Stalker groaned. Her irritation made her sound… familiar… but Taylor couldn't place it, not through the distortion of her bugs and the mask. "Thought I might have to. You?"

"I'm technically a runaway," Amy said with a grimace. She stood from her crouch over Regent. "I wouldn't put it past them to hold me until Carol could come to get me. I won't be here when they arrive."

"If you ran away to do things like this, good luck," Shadow Stalker said. "You're useful in the field. And you, Skitter." She turned to the amorphous mass of bugs Taylor had been busy arranging for quick travel. "Call me sometime. You get shit done, and around here that's rare."

With that, they dispersed. Victoria flew off – though not without an offer to take Amy to wherever she wanted, which was declined – and Amy jogged out of the alleyway and across the street. She made her way up the fire escape to Taylor's hiding place.

"We're not leaving yet, are we?" she asked, settling down beside Taylor.

"No," Taylor assured her. Her bugs had dispersed, but only from sight. They lingered, waiting and watching from the shadows. "Not until they're safely in handcuffs." Unconscious or not, guarded by a Ward or not, she would not assume they were defeated until they were actually in custody. Maybe not even then given they had escaped before, but there was little she could do about that.

She and Amy sat and waited until the Protectorate arrived. They pulled up in two big PRT vans, each of which disgorged a half-dozen troopers. Miss Militia was there, her power-formed gun flickering randomly. She met Shadow Stalker at the front of the alley.

"You're not on the clock," were the first words out of her mouth.

"I helped catch a whole villain team," Shadow Stalker shot back. Her crossbow was pointed down at the ground, but the bugs on her indicated that she was tense. The PRT troopers passed by the both of them. "And however many skinheads are still in the building they were raiding."

"Well, crap," Amy said when Taylor relayed that. "I could have made sure all of them were unconscious, too. Did we even think about that? The E88 could have shown up with reinforcements at any time!"

"I was handling it." It was true. She'd kept bugs on all of the unconscious idiots the Undersiders had beaten up in the dog fighting ring. She'd not mentioned it because not a single one of them had roused from their impact-induced slumber.

"Glad someone was," Amy muttered.

Taylor continued to watch as Miss Militia and Shadow Stalker helped the PRT troopers secure the Undersiders in their van. Shadow Stalker gave an abbreviated summary of the fight as they worked.

Then they moved on to dealing with the E88 members in the adjacent building, while the van with the Undersiders drove away.

Taylor followed it with her bugs until it escaped her range.

It was out of her hands.

---

"Dude!" Greg pulled his desk over to Taylor's with far too much enthusiasm for a Friday morning, let alone a Friday morning spent in Gladly's sad excuse for a class. "Taylor!"

"Not a dude," she muttered. One more day… Only a few more hours before school was over for the weekend and she could sleep. She might even sleep well, with Tattletale off the streets and thus off her mind once more.

"You were asking me about the bug cape," he blabbered excitedly, pulling out his phone. His words were on the edge of unintelligible noise to her, but the phrase 'bug cape' dragged her attention back to him. "The PRT just released a big statement to the press at noon today about that, did you see it?"

"No, was it on TV?" she asked.

"They only do that for really big stuff, this was just a prepared statement," he explained. "Look." He held his phone out, thankfully restraining his boundless enthusiasm before he shoved it right in her face.

She couldn't see all of the press release, but the part his screen displayed was more than enough to get the idea.

'...captured last night in a joint action by members of New Wave, the Protectorate, and an independent vigilante. Said vigilante has been identified by the Protectorate as tentatively heroic in nature and has no outstanding warrants at this time. Reports of excessive power-based violence from said vigilante were further determined to be an attempt at false incrimination masterminded by a member of the now-captured Undersiders.

A massive weight lifted from her shoulders and chest, figuratively speaking. In reality, a whole colony of ants stopped where they were and fell limp to the ground, expressing the utter relief she couldn't let on that she was feeling. "Wow. Didn't see that coming."

"I know, right!" Greg agreed. "They kept quiet for so long about it, and they still haven't given any real details but now we know they know about the new cape and we know that the villains know too because why else would they bother to frame them…"

She let his voice fade back into obscurity, though she made sure to nod whenever he paused. Mr. Gladly entered the room to a complete lack of applause and started lecturing on something or other, and she ignored him too. Just for today.

Whatever happened next wouldn't be as bad as it could be. She wasn't going to be arrested for crimes she hadn't committed. Tattletale was stuck in a cell, and whatever clever plan she had based around those attacks was dead before it could properly begin.

She passed through Gladly's class in a daze of relieved sleep deprivation. Greg talked, and she mostly let him talk. He was a good source of information. Sometimes. He had a nasty habit of disappearing whenever she could have used support against Emma and her friends, but he was good for other things. Like getting the 'random cape geek on PHO' view of local events without having to go digging on the site herself. She had told Shadow Stalker that she would be getting her own circle of informants at Winslow… Greg counted.

And thinking of that… She was used to tiredly tolerating whatever verbal – or possibly physical – crap Emma and her pack of hanger-ons decided to throw at her, but they had barely acknowledged her existence today. She saw Sophia and Emma by a row of lockers as she left Gladly's classroom at the end of the period. They weren't looking her way.

They were arguing. Emma was red in the face, almost matching her hair, and hiss-whispering something at Sophia with the vehemence of a woman scorned. Sophia, for her part, was the unflinching rock of reserved anger Emma's outrage broke upon like the tide, uttering short, inaudible retorts that had the redhead spluttering indignantly. She seemed just as unhappy about the situation, but whatever had put them at odds was worth holding her ground over.

Taylor followed a group of gossiping girls down the hallway, hoping to use them as a smokescreen to avoid attention. Emma remained oblivious, but Sophia caught sight of her, their eyes meeting as the group passed by.

Sophia scowled, then mimed… praying? Two hands together, eyes rolling upward for a moment. Emma demanded to know what she was doing, looked over–

Sophia grabbed her friend's shoulder and turned her right back around. "Not fucking worth it," she said loudly. "We're done with her."

It all clicked together in Taylor's mind. The deal she had made with Shadow Stalker. Last night's capture of the Undersiders. Shadow Stalker's informants at Winslow. Sophia telling Emma off…

Sophia was one of Shadow Stalker's contacts. She knew that Taylor was her counterpart under Skitter, and she was saying as much with that gesture. Praying to the higher power that had interceded, indeed.

Sophia and Emma might think she had finally found someone willing to protect her, but she knew better. She was protecting herself.

---

She had come prepared to do battle with paperwork. The PRT regional administration office was a cubicle farm, disconnected from the rest of their operations by several city blocks. It was a place to do paperwork and nothing else. No Wards, no Protectorate heroes… And no chance she could spy on the entire Rig while she was there.

And for a while, paperwork was all she faced. The secretary at the back door had led her to a small conference room with two stacks of forms, two pens, and a digital clock so she didn't lose track of the time. Reading small text with her mask on was annoying, and her bugs weren't much better, but she persevered. Forms about registering as an independent hero, forms about what 'independent' actually meant and what laws ensured she wasn't just making herself a Ward by another name, waivers, acknowledgements, lines of communication…

She was confident she wasn't signing away her rights, at least. The wording was clear on that. She was at best the equivalent of a contractor, complete with the right to refuse requests and demand a fair wage for her work if they hired her for something unusual. Better yet, she was entitled to a preliminary internal investigation if she was ever accused or suspected of breaking the law. They wouldn't just declare her a villain the next time someone tried to frame her. If there was a next time.

Then a familiar suit of power armor tromped through the back door of the office building. She continued to fill out a set of contact forms as his heavy, eerily silent figure moved through the building toward her.

He darkened the door of the little conference room she had been left in. "Skitter," Armsmaster said neutrally.

"Not once I file this," she replied. "That name was never mine. Too villainous." She had finally settled on a new name, one that felt right. "Are you here to pick the forms up? Because you'll have to wait until I finish them."

"That, and also to… explain." She suspected he was grimacing beneath the helmet. "Much has been going on behind the scenes, and if you are left unaware of it you might retain incorrect ideas as to how the system works."

She tilted her head and waited for him to continue. If he expected questions, he was going to be disappointed. She wasn't here because she wanted to work with the Protectorate, she was here because it was part of clearing her name and keeping it clear so New Wave would be satisfied.

"After the bank, many questions were asked." He shifted his weight, a tiny movement she wouldn't have noticed if she didn't have bugs on both of his shoulders. "The Director determined that it was my fault that you were there in the first place. I should have directly dissuaded you from attempting to infiltrate the Undersiders. Further, you betrayed them before you actually committed any major crimes beyond aiding and abetting, which obviously wouldn't stick given your treachery. At that time you were deemed to be a vigilante, not a criminal, but only because you informed me first and I did not actually tell you no."

"It was decided that you needed to be recruited," he continued. "Your participation in the bank robbery was covered up to avoid prematurely tarring you with the label of villain, either officially or in the court of public opinion. Wards were sent to talk to you, and you did not rebuff them entirely. Until the bug attacks came to our attention, we were treating you as a potential recruit who needed a light touch."

"Then you still didn't turn on me," she said coldly. "When you thought I was attacking and poisoning random people." Sure, she hadn't done those things, but she had a problem with cold, uncaring institutions that let people hurt others so long as it worked in their interests. In retrospect their lack of action eerily resembled Winslow's complacency, and she didn't like the comparison.

"It was far enough out of your established patterns that we set the question to out-of-state Thinkers," he retorted, a bit of heat entering his voice. "They all returned the same results, once filtered through the idiosyncrasies of their powers. You are capable of that, but you are not willing to do it at this time. Hardly an endorsement or a condemnation. Had the situation continued to escalate we would have brought you in, but we were already looking into the possibility of another responsible party. This is hardly the first time someone has been framed with their power as the falsified weapon."

Taylor decided to take that with a large grain of salt. She had no proof it was true and was unlikely to get any if she asked. "And Panacea?" she asked.

"Word from higher up," Armsmaster responded. "Watchdog keeps an eye on her. She was in no more danger than usual."

That… Taylor couldn't discount that it made sense. She had wondered why Amy was so vulnerable all the time despite being so important. Carol seemed like the sort of person to fight back against any attempt at assigning bodyguards, so the Protectorate just kept a set of Thinkers on the job instead. Presumably a few who could look into the future, so they weren't caught off-guard by a random mugging or something.

"DId you tell New Wave that?" she asked. "They didn't seem to know."

"I'm told we tried," Armsmaster said dryly. He seemed to think that was a sufficient explanation… and it was, given what Taylor had seen of New Wave. "As for the Undersiders… Tattletale has contracted a rather good defense lawyer. It remains to be seen whether she expects to actually use his services, or whether another escape is planned."

"Try and keep them this time," Taylor said bluntly. She didn't want to deal with Tattletale for a long, long time. The others… They were villains. They could fend for themselves. "How did you tie Tattletale to the attacks, though?"

When Armsmaster next spoke she got the distinct impression he was smiling under the helmet. "Thinkers are clever as a rule, but often handicapped by arrogance or incorrect base assumptions. In this case, it seems that she did not anticipate being efficiently ambushed and captured without a chance to prepare for incarceration. Her phone was seized and the contacts traced. Most were dead ends, but a few weren't. The trail led to several suspected low-ranking E88 members. Nothing specifically incriminating of the insect attacks, but enough for reasonable suspicion which turned into a warrant. They had plenty of evidence on hand and sang like birds once we let slip that they weren't working for the gang they thought they were."

"Really?" Tattletale, caught out by not ditching her phone… Taylor found that she could understand that. She had come way too close to being outed by her own phone only a few weeks ago. "Well… That's good. Try to keep them this time. I don't know if she'll be so careless if she gets another chance to plot."

"We… Yes, we will." It seemed like he was going to say something else, but he didn't. He stepped outside the conference room and closed the door, leaving her to her work. She could feel him waiting outside, though. It inspired her to finish the rest of her work quickly.

When she was finally done, she handed him the completed pile of paperwork. "Good luck…" He rifled through the forms, then stopped on one in particular. "Monarch?"

"There are no clever, heroic bug-related names that are also unique," she explained. "Monarch isn't taken, it isn't terrible or a pun, and I can own it." Orange highlights for her costume on the rare occasion she was seen in person. Butterflies to interact with the innocent, once the weather improved. It was doable.

"So you say." He tried to fold the papers in half, failed because there were so many they wouldn't fold neatly, and settled for tucking it under his arm. She hoped he didn't oil the joints of his metal suit. "I'll make sure these are processed before the end of the week."

---

Welcome, Bug.

PHO: Messaging

-Private

-Group Chats

-'Team Fuck Tattletale' (Members = 3, private = yes, log = yes)

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Okay, Vicky, I owe you an apology.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Turns out Panacea_Official has been hacked, so it's probably a very good thing you didn't link that one earlier.

Glory_Girl_Official: Hacked, or broken into by mom while she was frantically trying to track you down? Because everybody knows you keep your passwords written down on a piece of paper taped to the underside of your desk.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: How the hell do you know that? How does she know that? UGH! Now I have to change everything!

Glory_Girl_Official: Yeah, probably. Sorry, but at least this time it wasn't me spilling the beans. And at least you're nice and situated in Crystal's old room now. Could be worse!

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: You tell that to the theoretical purse-snatcher I'm going to seek out and beat up to vent later. Maybe I'll smack him with a dumpster. Or smack a dumpster with him; I can actually do that.

Glory_Girl_Official: Ooh, somebody stepped on your tail today. Mean.

Glory_Girl_Official: But seriously, I'm not doing that ever again. I'm being careful. Don't you start, you're the one who lectured me into changing my ways.

Bug: Am I interrupting something?

Bug: You know this private chat saves logs, right? Anyone we ever invite to it will be able to see this conversation.

Glory_Girl_Official: Planning on inviting somebody else?

Bug: Maybe Shadow Stalker if I can get her private PHO. Not sure. She helped us, but she's… I'm not sure about her. I don't know if it's a good idea or not.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Uh, no. Don't do that. She's a bitch in real life. Helpful in this one specific case, but still a bitch. You should hear about some of the things she's said to the other Wards. Vicky, back me up on this.

Bug: Don't do that.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: What?

Bug: That. If this is going to turn into mean-spirited gossip and bad-talking I'll leave right now. I mean it.

Glory_Girl_Official: It's not, we promise.

Bug: I have issues with bullies, and I am never going to become one.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Got it. How did the paperwork go? They spring any lawyer traps on you?

Bug: I hate politics. And maybe the PRT. But no, no surprises. Armsmaster came over to explain why they basically pretended I didn't exist to the media, and it boiled down to 'We didn't have anything to pin on you that wouldn't hurt our own hero worse', and then 'if we play nice we might be able to recruit you.'

Glory_Girl_Official: No, please don't shatter my idyllic mental image of government perfection! I certainly don't live with a raging lawyer with an ax to grind with the PRT or anything like that… I'm the picture of naive trust.

Glory_Girl_Official: Seriously, though, at least it worked out for you. Clearing your name would have been a lot harder if they publicized the attacks and called you out as the attacker.

Bug: It would have been.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: You're done with the paperwork, that's what matters. Coming over to help me patrol tonight?

Glory_Girl_Official: I know I am if she's not. You have a stick and some armor, that's not enough to fight people with guns on your own!

Bug: I'll be there. You're sure you want to do this instead of going to the hospital?

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: I did some healing this afternoon. Days for school and healing, nights for doing what I want to do.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: Maybe it's selfish but I don't care anymore. It's more than I was doing a week ago.

Bug: 'Better than before'. Thought could be our motto as a group.

KALEOOOOOOOOO11125565: I thought our motto was 'Fuck Tattletale'? Because that's what the group is called.

Bug: I'll change it. We can change it back if she breaks out of prison… again.

Glory_Girl_Official: While you're at it, don't forget to change your name here on PHO! Also, I'm flying over to you, Amy, so no mocking my typing from here on out.

Bug: Don't text and fly! I'll be there soon.

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-Change Name from Bug to: Monarch_Official

-Confirm

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---

Author's Note: Well, I did warn everyone at the start of this collection that posting would be sporadic. Now, admittedly I didn't mean for 'sporadic' to turn into 'nothing for nearly a year', but that's life. Didn't help that this second half went through more revisions than any single chapter of anything I've ever written. (And on that note, a few small things in the first chapter have been corrected, such as me getting Taylor's 'push emotional indicators to bugs' perk wrong by describing it as 'push emotions, period, into bugs'. Also, typos.)

That said, I'm still not really happy with this… but there comes a point where it's time to finalize and move on. Especially when expectations are only building as the unintended delay gets longer and longer.

And, because I suspect people are going to wonder and didn't think it was possible to exposit in the story itself without dragging things out (the key to thwarting a Thinker plan is stopping the Thinker before they can fully implement it, after all), here is Tattletale's master plan for getting back at Taylor with absolutely no hubris, embarrassment, or ego-induced glaring flaws whatsoever.

Goal: One-up and slap back at the bitch who got the Undersiders caught and made the Thinker who brought her into the fold look like an idiot (me). Do so in a clever and suitably ironic or fitting way. Do so without getting Coil involved (he is not amused and wants me to clean up my own mess or just leave it alone) and ideally do so in a way that has Taylor crawling back to the Undersiders to be a helpful part of the team and thus gets Coil off my back for misjudging the situation.

Preliminary Measures: Do some prying into Taylor's life with Thinker powers and good old-fashioned social engineering and find out about her bullies to better tailor a painful dig or two.

In the process, stumble across the whole Shadow Stalker debacle. Not what I expected.

Retrofit plan to work that in. Sure, the new plan snaps most of the Unwritten Rules over her knee, but those were always more of a suggestion than a rule, and only enforceable when they are obviously broken. A few coincidences are within reasonable doubt.

Step 1 of the plan proper: Contact Blasto. Blackmail / coerce / bribe him into making some low-tech bug pheromones that degrade after an hour or so. He's always strapped for easy cash and this is his specialty, so he's not hard to convince. Product induces a general aggressive swarm attacking whatever just got splashed with it. Also buy some bulk shipments of bugs, nonlethal but unpleasant. Don't want to rely on whatever bugs are lying around.

Step 2: Hire some disposable goons (not from Coil) and arrange some bug-maulings to take place after Taylor packs it in for the night. Easily done, given I can test whether she's there by setting up a mugging and watching what happens. People (criminals, but still), show up in the ER with bug-induced major injuries. This happens repeatedly, with an escalating level of severity.

Step 3: Sit back and watch as the PRT is kicked off their butts by the brutality and move to take Taylor in for real, no soft sell. It's the Shadow Stalker treatment for her. If she refuses and it escalates, she'll be a villain. If she goes along with it, she'll inevitably stumble across the emotional landmine that is Shadow Stalker's civilian identity, and it'll all go to shit anyway. Nobody will ever believe she wasn't the one attacking people with bugs; even if they believe she thinks she's not doing it, they'll never be sure her power isn't acting on her subconscious desires, or anything like that. I don't know enough to rule such a thing out, they certainly won't.

Step 4: Whenever Taylor's suitably fed up with the good guys, I step in and use my power and research-aided approach to coerce Taylor into coming back to the Undersiders, ideally offering apologies and feeling like she was the one in the wrong every step of the way. Lie like a rug if Taylor accuses me of framing her, Taylor won't be thinking clearly enough to get past clever misdirections. I then get to rub her success in everybody's faces. Payback is sweet, and Coil is happy. It's the perfect plan.

Yeah. It doesn't really live up to the whole 'rival Tattletale' business the first part sets up, which I'm not too happy about, but eh. This second part was like a pipe blockage; I just needed to beat it into shape enough to get it out there so the stuff behind it can flow freely.

Speaking of… I'm not going to disappear again now that I've dumped this. There are other one-shots that I've recently written (as in, they're done already) that are coming soon! I'm thinking one every three days or so for a bit until I run out, and then as my schedule allows me to complete more.

Coming this Tuesday: Exile, starring Panacea and Tattletale in a totally different situation!