A/N: This past year of inactivity has been rough, but things are looking up for my future! I've finally gotten my lifelong sleep issues diagnosed, and I'm also seeing a psychiatrist for the first time in half a decade. The ADHD medication we just resumed has been extremely beneficial towards my productivity, which means I'm finally able to write at a fairly consistent pace. Expect a weekly rotation of my fics for at least the next few months, and hopefully into the foreseeable future. I hope everyone is doing well in these hard times, and of course enjoy the chapter!

This chapter beta-read by Undead Robot and Abhorsen.

Tango 2.5

"So how's the new job going?" Dad asked around a mouthful of waffles.

Humming noncommittally, I chewed a minute as I mulled over a good mix between positive outlook and complete non-answer. Finally, I swallowed and replied. "It's good. I'm settling in a bit, I think." I cut another big bite of syrupy, fluffy goodness, asking him in return, "How's the Union doing?"

"Imploding, as always. It was good to take a few days off, but I'm glad to be back in the saddle. Speaking of which!" He set his fork down and got up, grabbed a folder from the cluttered countertop, and passed it to me as he sat down. "It's official. You're no longer enrolled at that joke of a high school. I've got to finish up here and get to the office, but this evening, we need to sit down and discuss options for the rest of your high school education."

I groaned like a good daughter, but nodded an affirmative. Inwardly, I was still riding the high. I was out. No more twisted pranks, my grades might actually recover, and I'd never have to see Emma's stupid face again unless things went to trial. I couldn't help but feel like there had to be a catch, but I couldn't see one.

Well, other than the fact I was a villain, anyway. All of this could only happen because of the fact I was funded by ill-gotten gains, working with dangerous people, and terrorizing the public I'd always wanted to help, because the alternative was to grit my teeth and bear everything till I broke again.

So much for the system, I thought as I bit into another forkful of breakfast.

The morning papers were admittedly disappointing for us all. Our caper, while incredibly public, had been fairly minor news in the face of allegations of child kidnapping rings following an ongoing Amber Alert. In most of the papers, we got a blurb that mostly spoke of the disruptions caused by Grue's darkness. The Bay Herald had done us more justice, including a minor statement from the PRT concerning the heist itself. It even mentioned me.

"Swarm?" I said incredulously. "That's the name they went with?"

"Not bad, as names go," Brian opined from the couch.

"I don't like it," Alec commented from the couch, not bothering to look away from his game. "Nobody's gonna remember a name like Swarm."

"The problem isn't being memorable, it's that it sounds threatening," I said with mild irritation as I set down the paper.

"Threatening is good. Threatening helps our rep."

"No, threatening is bad. It makes the chance of witch hunts grow," Lisa argued from across the table. "Look, word is probably going out that there's a new cape in town that has terrifying legions of rats and spiders. 'Swarm' implies an overwhelming attack by creepy-crawlies, which is a major fear for most people. Scared people call for authorities to help. Once word gets out she can control people too…"

I frowned. "Wait, I thought word would already be out? I wasn't really hiding it."

Lisa smirked. "Educated guess? They suspect that Regent is more powerful than he let on, and Panacea didn't get a chance to talk to them about her experience yet. Sorry Alec, but they'll be gunning for you until that gets cleared up."

Alec shrugged, flinching just a bit as the motion tugged at his cracked ribs.

"Well, whatever then," Brian agreed. "We'll just have to get the real name out before you get stuck with Swarm. Any ideas?"

I lamented the oversight of not copying my destroyed notes over, the day before I'd met them in that alleyway; I knew my capabilities, but I'd had ideas and plans that might not be easy to rebuild from memory. Months of work had been destroyed, just in time for me to have a team that could have benefited from it.

I dipped into the music for a moment to get my mind back on track. "I have a few ideas, but I never settled on one."

"Well why don't we kill two birds here?" Lisa said, standing up and fetching her laptop. "I still need to post that footage to PHO, we can figure out a name now and add it to the thread. That way we rub the heroes' faces in it and get ahead of their little smear tactics at the same time!"

That sounded like as good a plan as any to me.

After picking my name, we spent the day lounging around the loft, Brian and I working on getting me up to speed with unarmed combat while Lisa and Alec did what they could to help their bodies heal. The topic of an early dinner came up, and we decided it was a nice enough day to go out to the Boardwalk. We left Rachel a voicemail saying we'd get her dinner and made our way down to the shoreline.

The northern shores of the Bay weren't as well-kept as the tourist-flooded Boardwalk, mostly because they weren't sandy beaches. The other shores' gravels were pretty in their own way, but unfit to walk on without shoes even before all of the trash that caught on them at high tide. Still, there were tourists even this far into the Docks, looking to get a closer look at the Protectorate base or following the signs to the long-dead northern ferry dock that Dad fought so hard to restore.

Lisa and I hung back from the guys, not really interested in their conversation, but not really having much to talk about either. She had one of those tattoo sleeves you find in weird stores at the Mall pulled over her cast, in case a hero went by and connected the dots between the her and a certain blonde supervillain with a broken arm.

As for me? I was all over town, letting myself walk on near-autopilot while I lost myself in the music and the dance of my swarm. In my basement back home, I was manufacturing woven spider silk fabric inch by inch, ready to be sheared to size, dyed, layered, and padded out with armor plates(Or more Kevlar; I could afford another couple vests now, after all, rather than the scavenged scraps I had used for my current costume.) I had rats, mice, and squirrels ferrying junk out of the bottom level of Redmond Welding while we were away, hips shaking cheerily as they carried the nibbled-down scraps back to their nests and hollows. Sea birds lent me their senses to keep an eye out for trouble, flying back into my radius whenever my shared senses started to dim for a quick top-off of control.

Lisa turned her head my way, and I opened my eyes to meet hers. "What's up?"

Her face twitched a bit, a brief disquiet hidden under a small smile. "So that's what it's like, huh?"

I raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"I mean, that's what it's like for people I do the super-intuition thing to. The whole 'appears to not be aware of something, but is actually totally aware' thing you just did." she clarified, gesturing vaguely in my direction with her good hand. "Though I feel obligated to mention that normal people don't walk with their eyes closed that long."

I suppose that was fair. "Noted," I said reassuringly. Was it really that unsettling? Maybe I could use that to my advantage in costume, if I could save it for when I needed to creep people out. I'd have to get in the habit of acting like I wasn't tapped into other senses all the time.

My first thought was to try shutting off the swarm senses entirely when I wasn't looking to control something. Just the thought of trying that again brought to mind the worst days in the psych ward, though, so I quickly discarded that idea. Sensory deprivation was not the way to go.

The problem was that I was too good at multitasking. I knew where every living thing was inside an eighth of a mile, and on some level I was getting a trickle of information from each of them, nevermind the things I was actually controlling at the moment across the city with no mental effort. I could just learn how to act like I wasn't using extra senses, but the problem was right there in the title; it would be an act, and I didn't trust myself not to break character on accident. Lisa was right, if I did that kind of thing when a hero was watching or a camera was filming, it would be too suspicious.

A few minutes later, I had a rough solution. The answer, as silly as it felt, was to focus really, really hard on my own body as a whole. The sensations reminded me of an experience at summer camp, a fleeting moment on a cliffside where I didn't just passively take in the view, but actively looked at the valley below before the clarity slipped away. I was briefly aware of my pulse, the coolness of the afternoon shadows and rough fabric on my skin, the steady gait I was walking at, and how little I could actually hear with both ears blocked by earbuds. It was disorienting, and uncomfortable, and very difficult to hold onto; but for that brief moment, I was a normal person who just so happened to be the audience to a few thousand other creatures, separate from their dance but still appreciating the choreography.

I'd have to practice it more in a less busy environment, though, because we were at the Boardwalk.

We were almost back to the Loft when I noticed something was off.

"Guys? Rachel isn't home yet. Didn't you text her to head back for dinner?"

Brian checked his phone, frowned, and gave her a call. "Her phone is off. I know I turned it on for her before she left this morning, and she knows better than to turn it back off."

"Maybe she headed off to the cash early?" Alec wondered.

That sat with everyone for a long, heavy second, the good mood and afterglow of food sinking to form pits in our stomachs.

"I think," Brian said carefully as he opened the door, "We'd better go meet her there ASAP."

With unspoken agreement, we grabbed our costumes and caught the next bus to the Trainyards.

The Trainyards had, once upon a time, been the circulatory system of Brockton Bay's shipping industry. Every day, boats would come into port, offloading thousands of tons of cargo each day and loading up on a similar amount of outgoing trade. When the shipping industry dried up, the Trainyards chugged along for a few years, shipping in goods to help build up the downtown skyline and run the occasional passenger train, but there wasn't enough profit in it to keep them alive. One by one, the lines closed, leaving containers and cargo cars where they wouldn't be in the way.

A few people had tried to make something of the area afterward, buying up cheap warehouses and yards for bulk suppliers and storage locker complexes. With all the jobs disappearing, it had become a bit of a trend to live out of storage locker facilities, which provided some electricity, climate control, and security for far less than any apartment; this of course caused a boom in storage facilities, which led to more drug dens, more people in abysmal conditions, and more degradation of the Trainyards and Docks. By the time the city cracked down on the practice, the whole storage industry had been so high up in their profit bubble that they almost all died when it popped under them. There were acres of the facilities out here, left to rot for years now.

"We're looking for sixteen-oh-three," Grue said as we ducked under the fence to our chosen facility.

"There's squatters," I warned, noting a surprising amount of people in the nearer half of the facility. "I count at least twelve on this side. No dogs yet."

Grue nodded grimly.

As we moved further in, I swept the place with a pair of owls I'd picked up on the way. I didn't like it, but the time of day and the ride over meant that the only things still in my control were the spiders I'd been using to make silk all day, which were making their way home now as the sun began to set. Even they were starting to fade from my senses, and would need to be conditioned overnight for the next day of work. I was capturing what I could from the surroundings, but there just weren't many animals in these facilities.

The owls picked up on something I'd missed on first sense. "Hold up. We've got two guys on a roof," I said tensely, sending the owls on a second graceful sweep. "They're wearing costumes, something blue and pink. Looks like Uber and Leet are trying for a trap."

"Shit," Alec said, "We gotta kick their asses or we'll never live this down."

"And Bitch?"

"No sign yet. Might be the other side of the facility?"

"Probably near the back," Tattletale supplied. "They'll have someone watching her, and the money too."

"How do we want to handle this?" I asked. "I bet these squatters are their henchmen. I could grab the duo and their team before they even see us."

Grue thought about it a moment. "Do it," he said with his hollow voice. "Let's humiliate these bastards and get our teammate back, we can worry about the money later."

I picked a song and got to work.

P.S. For those of you who like to participate in their fanfics, I will be sourcing a PHO thread on the subject of the bank heist from the comments section of Spacebattles. To participate, join the conversation in the SB Tarantism thread anytime between Saturday, October 3rd at 12:00am CST and Sunday, October 4th at 11:59pm CST, using the heading [PHO1] above your in-character post. This will be part one of a multi-thread bonus PHO interlude at the end of Arc 2, so I can't guarantee everything will make it into each thread of the chapter, but I'm hoping this can become a semi-regular audience participation thing. Hope to see you then!