Walking slowly along the street, Taylor huddled inside her coat. The weather, while it was milder than normal for this time of year, was still cold and damp with a lot of slush on the ground. Her hornet was perched on her neck, under her hair, the tiny claws prickling her skin, but invisible outside her hood. She hadn't wanted to leave it at home until she worked out what would happen if they were separated, which was something she was planning on experimenting with at some point soon.
Her dad had taken the news of her powers with more equanimity than she'd expected, although he was not at all happy about some of the parts of the last couple of years that came out while she explained. She'd opened up about quite a lot of it while she was in hospital but not everything. Having him unexpectedly return home a couple of hours early, which turned out to be because he was worried about her, had rather wrecked her plans to slowly break the news to him about what she could do and hopefully gloss over some of the more upsetting parts of the whole thing. On the whole it was probably good that they'd cleared the air, she thought, although she regretting having to explain the whole story in one sitting like that. Partly because she didn't like to think about it, and partly because she hadn't wanted to add to his own problems with her own.
Which, she realized on one level, had made her own problems that much worse. If she'd opened up earlier, talked to him and asked for his help, perhaps she wouldn't have been forced into that fucking locker in the first place. But regrets were pointless, it had happened and they simply had to live with the outcome. It could have been worse after all. She got some neat powers out of the whole fucking thing, so it wasn't a complete wash, although she was getting annoyed about how those powers seemed intent on pushing themselves to the foreground whenever she looked away.
She'd had to be quite firm several times and insist her abilities stayed quiet. So far, it was working, and she'd been very gradually experimenting with allowing her perception of arthropods to expand outwards bit by bit. Going slowly because she didn't want that pain to come back. It had been more than slightly unpleasant.
So far she'd managed to get her ability to restrict itself to around fifty feet and only sense all the bugs rather than try to seize control of them all. The range was a tiny fraction of what she knew for a fact the true one was, and possibly it was even larger than that in reality, but she was taking her time and working up to that. For now, this was plenty, it gave her all sorts of useful information about what was going on around her, and didn't cause that massive feedback issue which left her groaning in pain and wishing she was unconscious. Hopefully with time that would solve itself though. She felt that it should work more smoothly than she'd experienced, something her power itself was telling her, but somehow she'd kind of broken it. Possibly by being sufficiently bloody-minded about not letting it just run rampant that it was sulking or something.
The thought amused her and she smiled to herself. It really did feel sometimes like something was staring in an irritated and also confused way at her from inside her own head, and she got the distinct impression that her power hadn't been expecting her. And, oddly, that the Changer part of it was a surprise to her power itself as well as her. Which was weird as hell, admittedly. Especially as it was in many ways the coolest part of the whole thing…
In the last four days she'd tried merging with the hornet again, which she now called Vespa because that was obvious, several different types of spider, a couple of ants, a firefly she found hibernating in a tree outside, and a paper wasp. Due to the season there weren't nearly as many insects around as there would be in summer, or even in a couple of months, but there were enough for experimentation. The hornet was one of her favorites, possibly because she was so closely linked with it all the time, which she definitely suspected wasn't meant to happen. At the moment she was avoiding forming quite so close a bond with anything else, partly out of caution, and partly because she kind of felt bad about taking over something so completely. Human Masters were feared and despised because it freaked people out to think of free will being suppressed like that among many reasons. While insects weren't sapient like humans were, they were still alive and, depending on how you thought about it, had their own free will.
And she'd accidentally completely screwed Vespa in that area. So far she couldn't work out how to pull her mind out of the hornet again, but she thought it was probably possible. Not that there was a lot of mind in the creature to override, but there was something in there. Instincts and abilities that she could feel, could use like they were her own and had always been part of her. Again, very weird indeed, but useful.
Even so she still felt a little guilty and while she knew full well most people would, once they stopped screaming, think that guilt over Mastering an invasive hornet species was strange, it didn't change her mind. She just felt slightly bad about it. The majority of people would kill the hornet without a moment's thought, or any other bug they found, but she'd never liked randomly wiping out something alive just because it was in the way.
Perhaps she was unusual, but it just seemed wasteful to her. Mind you, she'd always found bugs and whatnot fascinating since she was little, which had led to some outcomes her parents had sighed a lot over. Like the time she was six and collected about two hundred fireflies without them noticing, then taken them into her room and played with them. Of course the things hadn't stayed in her room, and inevitably the house had been filled with fireflies within hours. Her mom had not been particularly pleased about that, although her dad had spent quite a lot of time laughing his ass off. Mostly about the expression her mom had… She grinned at the memory, deeply missing those days with all three of them together.
There had been an incident with a dozen very large grasshoppers too, which had resulted in quite a lecture from her mom about bringing into the house things that should best be left in the back yard. A lecture that was repeated after the bullfrog incident. And the garter snake one…
'Huh,' she thought with another small smile. 'She might have had a point.'
There had been quite a lot of little creatures brought home, thinking back. Taylor had never had a pet, although she'd wanted a cat when she was younger, but she'd certainly had quite a lot of random animals in her room over the years. Emma hadn't been nearly as keen on them as she was, and Taylor might have chased her waving a very large spider a couple of times. Which, possibly, may have added to her former friend's unkeenness about spiders.
Just possibly.
Taylor's grin this time was a touch dark for a moment.
Anyway. That was in the past. Right now she had different issues. Making sure Vespa didn't come to harm was one of them. She'd become quite fond of the hornet very quickly, although her dad was considerably less enthused. He'd recoiled rather dramatically when she'd shown him the insect and said a number of things that weren't printable. She'd had to demonstrate that it was completely under her control for a while before he stopped looking nervously at it. And had gone a funny color when she told him it was a queen, and would be laying eggs and forming a hive sooner or later.
There had been some arguing about that. Taylor felt it was perfectly reasonable to have an asian giant hornet nest in the attic, since her ability would keep them completely controlled. He had pointed out in long suffering tones that they were still giant killer hornets and were absolutely terrifying and why on earth did she actually want more of them?
In return she'd explained that they might well come in useful.
The argument had gone on for a while, it had to be said. But in the end he'd allowed it, muttering about how he could always burn the house down if things went bad. She was pretty sure he was joking…
So once she figured out how to separate her mind from Vespa's enough to let the hornet go back to having something closer to a normal life, and the weather warmed up enough, the hornet queen would get on with what hornets did and a couple of months later Taylor would have lots of hornets to play with. If she couldn't figure out how to separate them, well… she could still have lots of hornets but she'd be much more involved in the process than she'd ever considered. Which was yet another weird part of her life now, but it was something she might come to experience.
Her mom had told her that one day she'd probably have kids, but Taylor suspected that the older woman would have raised her eyebrows at this particular method of achieving such a goal.
Snorting under her breath at the imagined expression her mom would have worn, Taylor paused to look into a shop window. She was wandering along a street near the Boardwalk shopping district, heading for the library, and intending to buy some new clothes too. Her dad had, after their initial long talk, decided to give her enough money to replace part of her wardrobe, partly due to her exploding her sweatpants and shirt that first time, and partly due to so much of it being wrecked by the three little shits. She'd been somewhat embarrassed, but had admitted she was running short of good clothes. He'd sighed a little, hugged her, and handed her a couple of hundred dollars.
The discussion had, she felt, brought them quite a long way back on the path to being normal again, although he'd certainly found parts of it very, very hard to deal with. Which was fair enough all things taken into account. Being half spider the whole time had certainly added to the surreality he clearly felt, but had also driven home just how fucked up her life had become. Oddly, after the first few minutes which involved a lot of rather incredulous staring, he'd pretty much accepted it and eventually ignored it as much as possible. She'd been impressed and pleased. And grateful he seemed to be returning to being the dad she remembered from before everything went horrible.
It was still going to be a long road to normality, she knew, but they'd taken the first steps along it. Her with eight feet, him with two. And both had promised each other to be more open about problems so all the stress wouldn't build up again like it had done. She had a nasty feeling that things could have become even worse than they had done and really didn't want to consider just how bad that could have ended up. It had been rough enough as it was.
The weather had been horrible the next few days so she'd stayed inside experimenting with her ability while he went off to work, tracking down interesting insects nearby, and reading a lot about them online. As well as doing some of the homework the school had sent her, after a brief battle with herself over simply burning it. In the end she'd decided, agreeing with her dad, that there was no point destroying her scholastic future entirely, and she might as well do the work. He was trying to arrange to get her into a different school but for now, sooner or later, she'd have to go back to Winslow. Which she wasn't looking forward to in the slightest. They'd even discussed home schooling, which she was quite interested in, but at the moment he'd put that down as a last resort as it added all sorts of complexities to life they couldn't easily afford. Not that this would stop it, he'd added, if all else failed.
He really wasn't happy about what had happened to her. Not even slightly. And she suspected that there were things he was working on he wasn't telling her, which might well cause a lot of problems for Winslow. That was fine, she didn't want to think about the damn place, and if it kept him happy, it was all good. He was much more open with her, and she with him, now but had no real wish currently to have anything more to do with the school than she was forced to.
He'd made a comment at one point that had made her wonder whether those doctors at Brockton General might also be even more incensed than she'd thought at the time, but hadn't expanded on it.
Taylor still had ten days of recovery time left, and she wasn't going to waste any of it worrying about Winslow or thinking about the damn place any more than necessary. She'd done their stupid homework, which was easy once she had time to think quietly rather than having to fend off idiots, got that out of the way, and was going to enjoy learning about her new powers in the time she had to herself. It was fun, aside from anything else. And she had to practice to get full control of the ability, stage by stage, rather than letting it turn everything up to eleven with a manic giggle. The damn thing was way too overenthusiastic in her view. Although it did, slowly, seem to be learning not to push things too hard. She'd only had to slap it down twice today which was a definite improvement.
So yeah. Life was peculiar in the extreme but at the moment going well, with the minor issue of return to school looming on the horizon. She'd enjoy herself while she could. And deal with the rest when she had no choice.
Moving on to the next shop, she inspected the window display, then nodded to herself and went inside. Soon she was flipping through various items of clothing looking for a replacement sweatshirt and pants, in a color she liked. Finding a couple of suitable sets she put them to one side and went hunting for socks.
Once she'd purchased what she was after, she left the store with a half-full backpack, resuming her slow trek to the library. A couple of other stops netted her some underwear and a pair of nice walking boots which were on sale, heavily discounted due to a small patch of damage on one of them which she decided was only cosmetic. She wore those out of the store, putting her old shoes into a plastic bag the girl on the register gave her when she asked, to prevent the water and dirt on them getting on anything in her backpack.
Satisfied, she left the shops behind her and walked faster. The library was close enough to the shopping district there hadn't been any point taking the bus, as it was only a few minutes walk, and the weather wasn't bad enough to warrant the effort either. Glancing up at the sky she wondered when they'd see the sun again. At least it was no longer doing the half snow half sleet thing the last few days had brought, which was a relief. A good snowfall was nice, she thought to herself, but what they'd had was just unpleasant.
In the library half an hour later she'd accumulated a number of interesting looking books on entomology, and a couple on other subjects she wanted. And now she was sitting at one of the computers idly poking around on the Parahumans Online forums while she waited for several large files to download, having found other free works on insects. The internet connection at home was so slow it would take hours, possibly days, to do the same thing, and while the library one wasn't exactly the fastest broadband on the planet, it was much quicker.
Studying the local cape scene seemed like it might be useful now that she was a Parahuman. Not that she had any particular interest to rush out into the street and beat up a villain at the moment. That sounded like a very dangerous occupation and while on the whole she was fine with saving people from crime, she didn't think that picking a fight with a super-powered Nazi was a brilliant idea. Especially without any practice in such things.
Shooting one in the head from a safe distance sounded like a much better idea, honestly. She wondered why this didn't happen more. Especially considering how many people got randomly shot all the time. It was a little weird, all in all. But life was odd at the best of times in her experience. Although admittedly hers had become a lot stranger recently.
Smiling a little to herself, Taylor read the available information on all the local heroes, and the villains too. There seemed to be an awful lot of the latter…
Some were clearly mostly harmless, like various minor thieves, but the aforementioned super powered Nazis very much were not, neither was the asian rage dragon and his suicide bomber friend. The crazy drug dealers were relatively tame by comparison but still not good. She shook her head as she read some of the news articles, wondering what drove some people to be such utter shits to everyone. And why Nazis were allowed to wander around freely. Hadn't the world fought a war to put those bastard down the first time? It was really annoying, to put it mildly, that they were still around.
She sighed, propping her head on one fist as she scrolled. Her dad had, looking worried, asked her what she intended to do with her powers. He'd obviously thought that she was planning on running around being a hero. Or a villain. Oddly he hadn't seemed to worry so much which it was as he worried about either happening at all. Taylor had honestly thought hard about the question, and finally told him that she didn't have any particular urge to fight evil while wearing a mask, although she had no trouble defending herself or anyone else with her new powers. If necessary, she'd step in, but she didn't plan on looking for trouble. Which was entirely true.
Growing up she'd always wondered whether she could be a hero. Every kid probably did. She'd had the PRT posters on her walls, she knew most of the names of the local Protectorate and the more famous national ones, and of course everyone knew the Triumvirate, and Dragon. She even still had a little figurine of the latter sitting on her desk, as she admired Dragon a lot. But… as she'd got older, she'd realized that so much of what the capes did was kind of silly. Her mom had explained a lot of things she'd wondered about as a small child when she was old enough to understand, and talked about her own experiences with being Parahuman-adjacent for a few years a long time ago. The talks had made it clear that a lot of that lifestyle was nowhere near as simple good versus evil as the news made it out to be, and quite a bit of it was really stupid. Not to mention dangerous.
Neither her mom or her dad were entirely fond of the PRT either, for various reasons. Her mom didn't generally trust the government overall, and said the PRT was just another example of authority doing whatever the hell it wanted without thinking through the consequences. Her dad felt that the PRT talked a good line but failed dismally at following through, something she had learned over the years was a common outlook among people not living in the well off areas of the city. There was no denying the fact that what the PRT said and what the PRT did seemed to be quite at odds a lot of the time.
Hence the still-present super powered Nazis, of course.
Even so, despite his feelings about that organization, they'd seriously discussed her joining the Wards. He hadn't really pushed, and when she'd thought it over and told him that she didn't see the point right now, he'd simply nodded acceptance. Taylor was pleased and relieved that he hadn't insisted. They'd agreed that it was an option for the future, but for now it would be left off the table.
So in the end she was just going to learn how her power worked, what she could do with it, and avoid all that cape insanity as much as possible. It seemed far more sensible than running around in a silly costume hitting things.
The computer made a pinging sound, indicating that her files had finished downloading. Minimizing the web browser she started them copying onto the USB stick she'd bought from the library, then went back to PHO. Spotting a thread title that made her stare, she clicked on it. Then read the thread with growing interest and steadily rising glee.
"Oh my god," she chortled as she got to the bottom of the page. "I can't believe it."
Apparently Brockton General had made a complaint to the state medical board about a case where a local school had failed to keep their students under control, the result being one of those students had been admitted in severe medical distress and had nearly died due to massive systemic infection after being exposed to a major biohazard. She had a damn good idea who they were referring to although for medical privacy reasons no names were given. The various sources quoted said that the school had denied all responsibility for the incident, which had led the hospital to dig further, finding that there had been a whole string of injuries which apparently Winslow had gone to some effort to cover up. Reference was made to bribes and threats, along with destruction of evidence.
She was chuckling maliciously as she kept reading, making one of the other people using a computer near her look at her with a somewhat nervous expression then get up and move. Taylor ignored that as she read about how the Winslow administration seemed to have dug itself a very deep hole then jumped in without hesitation. The latest postings in the thread claimed that the city administration had become involved and was asking awkward questions of the board of governors for the school, which was probably going to result in quite a number of people having a very unpleasant time for the foreseeable future.
By the sounds of it, an awful lot of pigeons had come home to roost all at once, and the end result was that Principal Blackwell and her colleagues were going find themselves fighting off forces they had little chance of surviving. Taylor started laughing helplessly as she pictured the look on Blackwell's face, and those of other teachers she heartily disliked and had absolutely zero respect for.
Her dad was going to laugh his ass off when she showed him this. Then probably phone the hospital and ask why they hadn't been informed.
Which was a valid question, admittedly. She assumed it was again most likely down to medical privacy rules, but wondered if the lawsuits that were definitely heading towards Winslow at high speed might produce some compensation for her. It was worth asking her dad to look into.
Finding herself suddenly even more cheerful than she'd been up to now, and idly musing on whether her break from school might be a touch longer than advertised, Taylor finished up on the computer, unplugged her USB stick, and got up humming to herself. It was a good day and it was only half done so far.
As she was walking back to the bus stop, still humming happily, she spotted something in the distance that made her pause for a moment. Two men, both with shaved heads and tattoos on their necks she didn't need to see close up to recognize, who had been lurking in a service alley that led around the rear of a small shopping area, suddenly grabbed a girl about her age and dragged her off the main road. At least three other people saw this happen, and the scream, abruptly cut off, was clearly audible even from where Taylor was, but the witnesses all merely lowered their heads and moved away quickly.
She had a very good idea what was about to happen to that girl, who was of a much darker complexion than the two skinheads were. It was something that happened far too often around the city, although not often in broad daylight in the commercial district like that. Looking around, she couldn't see any sign of any cops, or any heroic Parahumans either. Or, really, anyone with common decency. Every single person who might have stepped in had vanished.
Taylor felt a deep anger rising from somewhere inside her. Her Vespa body vibrated against the back of her neck, reflecting the emotional turmoil. "Fuck it," she growled under her breath. "And I was in such a good mood until now. God, I hate Nazis."
There was no real choice in her mind. Very irritated indeed, Taylor looked around again then headed for a shop she'd been in earlier. She knew it had a changing room which had a window that could be opened in it, and no cameras. Entering it, she grabbed a couple of t-shirts off the rack, not even checking the sizes, without breaking step, and headed for the changing rooms which were upstairs. Nodding to the sales girl who looked up from her magazine as she walked past, she smiled and indicated where she was going. The older girl nodded back with a smile then promptly ignored her, going back to her reading. Hurrying up the stairs, Taylor went into the changing room, locked the door, opened the window as far as it would go, and checked the size of the gap. Good enough.
It took her a few seconds to undress, then put her clothes on the bench in the room. Double checking the door was definitely locked and there were no hidden cameras, she merged with Vespa. Moments later there was an enormous hornet standing on the floor. Quickly scurrying up the wall she peered out the window, looking from side to side to make sure no one was looking. All she could see was several roofs below her, a cold windy day, and no witnesses. 'Perfect,' she thought as she squeezed her body through the window. It wasn't too hard although it was a tight fit. A second after that she was flying towards the alley the skinheads had taken their victim into.
She bitterly disliked being forced into doing something like this and taking the risk someone might find out about her, but she couldn't let an innocent victim get hurt or killed by a fucking Nazi. The news had all too many reports of this sort of thing, and after the assault, the victim usually didn't make it. The bastards tended to have their fun and get rid of witnesses…
On the other hand, flying like this was great, she decided as she droned along, the sound of her wings echoing over the roofs. She hadn't yet had the chance to try it outside, and resolved to do so again when it wasn't quite so critical. Looking down she spotted the two skinheads directly below her, now she'd arrived at the alley. As she'd expected, one of them was tearing the clothes off the poor girl, while the other was rummaging in her bag, tossing things to the ground. Feeling the anger grow, she suppressed the immediate urge to simply sting them to hell, knowing that at her size her stinger was so enormous it would kill them simply from the sharp force trauma never mind the amount of venom she could inject.
Taylor suspected that her venom might be similarly upscaled in potency compared to a normal asian hornet as her size was, which was a touch terrifying. The standard venom was already bad enough.
However, she was more than strong enough like this to fuck someone up. And tough enough, she thought, to take quite an impact to her exoskeleton. Not that she had any inclination to get shot at or anything. But she couldn't see a gun on either of them, nor sense gun oil through her antennae, which she'd found were incredibly sensitive to scents. All she could detect was what she could see, along with a lot of alcohol on their breath. So, after only a second or so of assessing the situation, which was easy due to the massive boost in reflexes and thinking speed she got from her insect change, she simply tipped over into a dive and rammed the idiot assaulting the girl in the side.
He flew a good ten feet with a satisfying scream of shock which turned into a moan of pain as he slammed into the wall of the alley, slid down it, and landed amidst some garbage cans. One of them tipped over and disgorged a whole mass of rotting vegetables onto his head. The skinhead twitched a couple of times and fell unconscious, she guessed with at least a couple of broken ribs to keep him honest when he woke up.
The other one stared at her with wide eyes as she landed facing him, between him and the girl, who was breathing hard and gaping, holding what was left of her shirt closed with her hands. "Drop the bag and run, asshole," Taylor growled, her hornet voice completely unrecognizable as hers yet easily understandable. "Or I'll sting you so hard your great grandparents will scream in agony."
She buzzed her wings threateningly, making the entire alley vibrate with a bass note, and the skinhead paled to the point he looked like he was in danger of passing out, the swastika tattooed on his neck contrasting dramatically. Opening his mouth he let out a scream of horror, flung the bag at her, and legged it like the hounds of hell were on his heels. "Keep running!" she shouted after him. "I've got your scent, I can find you anywhere!" His footsteps increased in speed gratifyingly.
It was kind of true, but she had no intention of going looking for the fucker. But with luck it would give him something to think about for a long time.
Internally grinning, something her current body wasn't suited for doing externally at the moment, she turned to the woman who was still staring at her in a mix of horror and relief. "Are you all right?" she asked, her voice much less harsh.
The woman nodded jerkily. "Um… thank you?"
"No problem," Taylor replied. "You should call the cops though. I have to go, I'm already late." The woman looked massively confused as well now, but Taylor just flicked her antennae cheerfully at her, waved with a foreleg, then took off and headed back to the open window at high speed. All in all it had been under a minute since she'd left the shop but she didn't want to take any more risks than she had to. Still annoyed at the skinheads, she quickly retraced her path, made sure no one was looking, and squeezed through again into the changing room which was thankfully still undisturbed. Seconds later she was getting dressed again.
And smiling to herself in a rather grim manner. That had been sort of fun, and with any luck at least two racist rapey muggers would think twice before they tried anything like that again.
Her inner hornet was quite pleased too, she mused, sending the Vespa body back under her hair.
Checking the shirts and finding that one was actually her size and quite nice, she tried it on quickly, then left the changing room and went down to the store. Putting the other one back, she paid for the second, then left, finding that there was already a police car parked at the entrance to the alley, two cops getting out and heading into the narrow space. Satisfied that things were under control Taylor turned in the other direction and resumed her interrupted walk towards the bus stop, reflecting on how much fun flying was.
On the ride home, she started making mental notes about other experiments she could do with her power. She'd suddenly had the thought that it would be interesting to see if she could merge with more than one bug at the same time…
That seemed to make the thing at the back of her mind sit up and stare at her. She stared back, a small smirk in her mental gaze.
'Yeah. I'm going to see what I can do, and you're going to cooperate. So sit down and shut up while we figure all this out, got me?'
Oh yes. Life was looking up, she thought, feeling surprisingly good about things. And wondering what her dad would say when she showed him the stuff on PHO...