"There we go." Lisa proudly waved the paper in her hand at Brian, who looked puzzled, then as she kept waving it past his face, sighed and grabbed it from her. She smirked as he held it up and read it carefully, his eyebrows rising steadily. When he reached the bottom of the page, he turned it over to check the back, found it was blank, turned it back, and read it again.
Finally he lowered it and stared at her. The smirk widened.
"How the fuck did you get a legitimate private investigator's license, Lisa?" he demanded, sounding irked and bemused in equal quantity.
She winked at him and plucked it from his hand, holding it up to regard proudly. Suspiciously, he then asked, with a sort of foreboding look, "It is legit, right? You're not hacking into the state fucking government's database and playing around with it, right? Because considering just how fucked up the political system is around here right now and how many investigations are going on, I for one do not want to be standing next to you if the FBI kicks the door in…"
"Would I do that, Brian?" she asked sweetly, grinning at him.
The look he gave her was so old-fashioned it had probably personally met a mammoth. "Of course you would, Lisa," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and sounding pained. "I'm just hoping you didn't."
"Nope, don't worry, it's completely real," she assured him with a shit-eating grin as she flopped onto his sofa and put her feet up on one end. He pushed them to the floor then sat in their place while glaring at her. She promptly put them back, on his legs this time. Apparently deciding to live with it before she got even more annoying, he just folded his arms and stared at her.
"I repeat," he repeated, "How? As far as I know you have to be vouched for by at least three people who've known you for something like three years, and oh yes, you need to have been in law enforcement. You were kind of the exact opposite of that!"
She laughed, looking at the document again. "But never convicted of any crimes, or even caught doing any crimes, remember. I'm as innocent as the drifting snow as far as the law is concerned. As Lisa Wilbourn, anyway…" The blonde smirked again as he dropped his head back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling with an expression of hopelessness. "And it's amazing what you can get credentials for if you go through the right path. Thank Calvert for some of that, actually. That son of a bitch fucked up so many official systems they'll be untangling them for a decade. I just found the right method to get all my documents in order, and from the point of view of the government, they're absolutely real. They are real, they were issued by the state government! I didn't even lie on any of them… Much, anyway. Nothing that really counts."
"Oh, Jesus, this is going to come back at the worst possible moment and bite all of us in the ass, isn't it?" he moaned, putting his hand over his eyes.
"Nah, it's fine, believe me. I used resources that are completely reliable. Cost a mint, but it's absolutely clean as far as any government department is concerned." She chuckled as he lifted his hand and peered at her, then slammed it back again and sighed loudly. "Even I would have trouble penetrating my own cover story."
"Isn't there a minimum age limit for a PI?" he asked desperately.
"You'd think so, but weirdly enough, no," she giggled. "I think that's probably a loophole, actually, but considering how much the laws surrounding all sorts of things more or less law enforcement adjacent have been chopped and changed since Parahumans turned up, there are all sorts of gaps in them where people didn't quite think things through all the way. That's true of the law enforcement thing for a PI license too, in fact. It used to be that you had to have been a cop or something of that nature, but they loosened up the regulations about a decade ago and all you need now is to prove that you worked in an investigative field for a minimum of a year. Oddly enough, I was able to figure out how to spin what Calvert had me doing to meet the requirements." Her grin was legendary as he gaped at her. "Bastard fucked up my life, all our lives, but there are some benefits I'm pretty sure he didn't consider. Had to be creative with the paperwork and like I said pay a pretty steep fee to… a specific source… but the state government accepted everything without question. As long as I don't get caught breaking the law too much in the next couple of years, no one will care. Or even really look too hard at it."
"Fuck me," he muttered, sounding worried. She shrugged, still grinning.
"Yeah, it's bizarre, but it's how the rules work. Probably not how they think they work, but I'm good at finding little gaps and worming my way through them. It's kind of my thing. And now I get to do it and get paid for it, completely legally."
"For a given version of legality which probably isn't quite what most people think of it as," he grumbled. She prodded him with her heel, making him flinch slightly.
"Don't be so negative, Brian. Would you rather have me running around completely unsupervised sticking my nose into everything?"
"Isn't that exactly what's going to happen?" he queried acidly.
She looked thoughtfully at the document, then smirked at him again. "Do you know, you might be right about that? But the thing is…" Trailing off, she raised an eyebrow at him.
"The thing is?" he parroted.
"The thing is… I'll be getting paid for it. So I'll be a professional nosy busybody, rather than just a talented amateur. Perfectly legitimate, you see? I've got a business plan, and insurance, and an office, and everything. Even a website."
Her friend rolled his eyes towards her, groaned, then got up and went into the kitchen of his apartment, coming back after a couple of minutes of rattling sounds with two mugs of coffee. He handed her one, then slumped on the sofa, sipping at his own. "This is going to go horribly wrong, I can feel it," he sighed disconsolately.
"Nonsense, Brian. It'll be great!" Lisa took a swig of her own coffee and smiled. "And can you think of a better job for me? One that's not what we used to do, I mean."
"Well…" He was clearly trying to think of something, but in the end shook his head. "No. Fuck. You're really doing this?"
"Yeah. Why not? Sure, I don't need the money, none of us do, but I can't sit on my ass all day trolling PHO for shits and giggles."
"No, you'll just do that evenings and weekends," he replied dryly.
Lisa nodded, the grin that hadn't yet gone away widening slightly for a moment. "A girl needs a hobby, you know."
"We're doomed," he stated, lifting his mug to his mouth. Pausing halfway, he added, "Doomed." Then he took another long drink of coffee, looking like he was wishing it had a certain alcoholic content to it.
Swiveling around on the sofa, Lisa sat next to him and nudged him with her elbow, smiling somewhat less manically when he glanced at her. "We're not doomed, Brian. We both have jobs that will legitimize us as far as the law is concerned, more than enough money to live on for the rest of our lives even aside from that, Alec's got his games and all the pizza he can eat which keeps him quiet and out of trouble, Rachel is going to have more dogs than even she can handle pretty soon… Things are going pretty well right now."
"That's what worries me," he mumbled. "I'm waiting for the other boot to land."
Watching a moth fluttering around the light in the ceiling, Lisa laughed a little. "That probably won't happen any time soon," she replied cheerfully. "Brockton Bay is getting better by the day. And I think that's going to keep happening. Might get a bit weird, but then when has this place ever not been weird?"
"I was born here, I know how weird it is," he sighed. "That's the problem."
Finishing her coffee, she hopped to her feet. "Don't be so depressing. You're getting custody of Aisha in less than a month. You need to be happy for her! Happy!" Putting her mug on his coffee table she reached out with her forefingers and pushed the corners of his mouth up, grinning at him. "Like that. Come on, I know you can do it. Think of Aisha and how much fun she'll have here! Oooh… There's an idea. I wonder if she'd like a part time job? I know a brand new business that may have an opening for a bright inquisitive mind like that!"
Slapping her hands away Brian stared in horror at her as she grinned widely.
"No. Lisa, no! Don't get Aisha mixed up in your madness!"
Waving at him with her fingertips, Lisa turned to his door and quickly exited, whistling to herself and feeling in a very good mood. The life of a private investigator sounded right up her alley. And she looked good in a classic trench-coat too! Behind her as she walked down the corridor of the apartment building she heard a door slam and footsteps. "LISA! Come back here! We need to talk about this!"
"Come on, Brian, you can see my office and help me work out what color to paint it," she called back, speeding up and trying not to laugh. Moments later she was running down the stairs snickering to herself with Brian in hot pursuit.
The moth that landed on her hand as she pushed open the fire door at the bottom seemed to wave its antennae at her in a friendly manner before it flew away again, making her shake her head and laugh a little.
Yes. Brockton Bay was getting weirder, in ways hardly anyone was noticing yet, and she couldn't help wanting to see what happened next.
In the meantime she had a detective agency to start, and that was going to need a good name...
"All right, people! Listen up! I shall be out of town on a business trip, and spreading the word of arthropod joy to all. Very quietly, of course, there's no point upsetting anyone, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"So while I'm gone, I'll be relying on all of you to keep a very low profile, but also keep things under control. You all understand me?"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Remember, we work from the shadows, and the best problem is one that never happens. Or if it does happen, it gets sorted out before anyone notices. That is the Arthropod, Mollusk, and Nematode Alliance Union way!"
"Glory to the AMNAU!"
"That's the spirit! After all, if you're doing the job properly no one knows you did anything at all. Although I think we may need to workshop a better rallying cry. Guys, make a note."
A glow-spider saluted with one leg while typing rapidly with three more. Taylor grinned to herself, feeling that her father would probably look at her and sigh heavily, but this was fun. Why not enjoy your power, right?
"And if we do need to step in, do it discreetly. But at the same time, make it impressive. In a discreet manner, of course. Because Presentation is key, so I'm informed, and that guy seemed to know his stuff."
"Ma'am, we understand and will obey!"
Giggling, Taylor looked around at her work, finding it to her liking in a manner that would possibly cause some odd expressions for most other people. The outgrowth of her latest breakthrough in pushing her power to do what she wanted it to had come after her idea in bed the other night. And, slightly to her surprise, while very much to her power's surprise, it had worked. Far better than she'd hoped, in fact.
Her poor power had felt stunned, then somewhat worried and nervous if she was right, forcing her to spend a while cheering it up. Bit weird, but that seemed to be how things went these days. But when it got over its shock it was happily enthusiastic, nearly as much as she herself was, and both of them were very much enjoying the result now.
She'd found herself reasoning that if, as she suspected, her power was now treating all her level two connected creatures as basically being her in a very real way, which did seem to fit the evidence and all the experiments and testing she'd done, surely that meant that for all intents and purposes they were a singular thing? Just distributed over a large area. Even the level one connections had quite a lot of that going on, but the level twos were certainly working if that was the case.
And, she'd reasoned once she'd thought of it, if that was the case, then the logical conclusion from that was that her library of creatures should be available to all of the level twos at the same time. Because they were all connected to each other, and her, via whatever method the power used. Any creature merged into either her human body or any of her other very non-human ones should be considered merged with all of them, as it was simply the same library in every case. There was no 'these are the creatures merged with Vespa I' and 'these are the creatures merged with Taylor,' there was only 'these are the creatures merged with me.' All of 'me' whatever that really meant at that point.
Her power had been far less convinced about this, of course, and had taken quite a lot of persuasion followed by sternly telling it to stop being difficult and just accept reality, in other words the usual process, before everything had lurched sideways in several different directions at the same time and it was indeed so. While her power had gaped, she'd grinned like an idiot, feeling all manner of new possibilities opening up in front of her beyond even those she'd already gleefully grabbed.
"We have added your biological distinctiveness to our collective and made it our own," she muttered with a smile as she examined through more or less human eyes two super-hornets, a jumping spider drider, a black widow one, a scorpion one, and something rather odd based on a drillipede that she'd come up with for swimming through tunnels even more effectively than her previous attempts. A sort of worm-eel-millipede-mermaid form, which worked much better than she'd hoped and was very cool indeed.
And, as she examined them through her own eyes, she was examining herself through her other own eyes, each body grinning in its own way as the two spider-driders exchanged high-fives.
"Very cool," jumping-drider Taylor said, giggling.
"Yeah, I agree," scorpion-drider Taylor replied, looking amused.
"We're of one mind!"
"But two bodies."
"More than two."
"Way more."
"Which is seriously neat," the drillipede hybrid commented brightly.
"I know!"
"So do I!"
"Funny, that."
"Yeah. Weird. It's like we share an outlook on life."
"I wonder how that happened?"
"No idea. Probably her fault."
Black-widow-drider pointed at currently mostly human Taylor who was sitting on the table next to her computer giggling, her illuminated antennae wiggling about. All her other bodies waved to her and she waved back, feeling that this sort of thing was probably going to made her dad look even more pained than he normally did when he saw one of her ideas in action. And it had some amazing possibilities for practical jokes at some point…
All of her shared a look of hilarity, before she hopped off the table and landed as a hornet-based drider sort of thing, all six legs hitting the ground at the same time. "Cool as fuck," she chortled, scuttling over to the jumping-drider form and studying it for flaws, while at the same time her drider-self prodded her on the head with one finger. "Seems to work amazingly well. I told you it would work!" Her power seemed to shake the head it didn't have in a sort of respectful and baffled resignation along with a good dose of curiosity and anticipation.
"Probably have to come up with names for all of me at some point, but I guess it doesn't matter right now. Not like I'm planning on going public," she mused. Although in a sense she had done the other day with those two Nazi fuckers and their little weapons depot. That had been the first test of how effectively this process would work to let her deal with problems around the place. It had been quite convenient that the Empire capes were surrounded by all sorts of interesting hardware, including those smoke grenades…
Those things had been really helpful, making the entire process much more fun for her and much less fun for them, which she rather felt was very justified considering who and what they were. And relieving the E88 of a few cases of the things was perfectly reasonable, she thought with a grin. She could find much better uses for them than the Nazis could. You never knew when a sudden smoke cloud might come in handy, after all.
And of course it had kept anyone from positively identifying just who it was, or from the PRT's viewpoint, what it was, that had taken the Empire capes and gang members down. Professor Brooks, who Taylor thought was a really interesting guy she'd have to talk to at some point, had been surprisingly accurate at estimating her drider-body's size from her silk, which impressed her a lot. He was slightly overestimating it, but pretty close his margin of error, which showed just how much the man knew.
Perhaps one day she'd arrange a meeting.
Not today, though, today she was experimenting with new forms and making a list of things to look for on the trip. There were a lot of fun new arthropods she could, with a little luck, locate in California. And she had other things to prototype for the trip too, which was the next task. She didn't need to actually mass produce most of them right at the moment thanks to her latest breakthrough though.
Deciding that having so many of her around right now wasn't required, she changed most of them back into the base form each had started as, Jumpy, Impy, a drillipede, and a so-far unnamed but unnaturally large black widow taking the place of the hybrids, while the super-hornets shrank back into Vespa I and II. Vespa I flew over to land on her head even as Vespa II wandered around remerging with all the others, then came over to her and merged with her human-hornet form, which in turn changed into her favorite jumping-spider with many upgrades drider shape. Stretching her arms wide, Taylor yawned, feeling very pleased with herself and the progress she was making.
'Need to figure out how to make the other nodes more human, I think, at some point,' she pondered as she picked up a notebook and flipped through it, the glow-spiders on keyboard duty bringing up other files on both laptops. Her new one had some non-incriminating data on it which was explainable as educational stuff, the original one with her serious work the one she was going to leave at home where it would be safe. While she was in LA, although in some ways that really wasn't an accurate description now as she would still be here too, she'd move it and her notebooks somewhere no one would ever be able to locate just in case something odd happened. She doubted it would based on all her tests, but she didn't like taking stupid chances. That was why she had several really good dry bags to put her critical data into, backed up of course in more than one location.
That guy in the shop was right. No point having data if you didn't have backups, because sooner or later in that case you wouldn't have data…
The single limitation she'd so far hit with her multiple bodies trick was that for some reason she couldn't seem to produce several copies of her completely human-appearing form. Admittedly it hadn't been completely human for a couple of months or more, at least on the inside. For that matter 'not completely human' was probably an understatement, she thought with a grin. 'Quite inhuman' was more accurate in some ways. But from what anyone could see she was basically just Taylor Hebert, with some improvements easily explained by regular exercise and good diet. Both of which were true, even as they entirely ignored how she was still steadily getting stronger, tougher, and faster, for reasons she couldn't fully explain yet. And if anything her mental processing speed was going up too, each time she added a new creature to her library.
She was pretty sure that the process of adding creatures was what was driving most of the improvements. It seemed obvious but she'd learned not to jump to conclusions, so it might be something else at play. Or something else plus that, which seemed plausible. Certainly her power didn't seem to quite understand it either and in some ways was more baffled than she was, by the feel of it. She was definitely doing things it was convinced weren't possible on a regular basis. But they worked, so they clearly were possible, and in the end she just had to figure out why while accepting them as fact. As did it.
There was no real arguing with empirical, provable, fact after all. You could disagree on how things happened even as you had to accept that they happened.
But why she couldn't make what was basically a perfect clone of her upgraded human form out of, for example, Vespa, she wasn't sure yet. There had to be a reason, and she was pretty certain there'd be a workaround once she figured that reason out as there had been so far for everything else that had got in her way, but right now she didn't know what either was. It didn't really matter, she supposed, it was more intellectual curiosity driving her thinking about it, and the desire to show her power that limits were there to be broken. Which it did seem to be coming to terms with, to be fair, even as it protested each time she actually did that.
And actually having two of her running around would probably not be the best way to avoid people starting to look worried, for that matter. Never mind more of her. Keeping a low profile, in fact a subterranean one as she was almost literally doing, wasn't completely compatible with being in two places at once. Although she was actually in far, far more than two places at once… Taylor grinned to herself as she tripped a fleeing snatch and grab robber halfway across the city with a thread of spider silk, removing it before anyone noticed in the commotion caused by two bystanders jumping the idiot and holding him for the cops. Yeah. Two places at once was baby stuff. She'd gone way past that.
So, while it would probably be a very funny joke to have her dad come down to breakfast one morning and find two of her sitting at the table, she could live without that. She'd probably crack it sooner or later but it wasn't a high priority. One human-appearing version of her and multiple hybrid variants was still really cool and very useful. And the main utility of the trick was being able to use a global library rather than multiple local versions, after all. That part expanded her options massively in one step.
Cracking her knuckles, she looked at her waiting audience of glow-spiders, all her little helpers peering back at her with interest. "Right, guys! That was fun, but now let's get to work. We have new friends to design!"
And there was much waving of legs in cheerful rejoicing, before all of them buckled down to making Nature back away slowly with a somewhat horrified expression.
Not that it helped...
"Thanks for the lift, Kurt."
"No problem, Danny. Give Kyle my best, hey? Been a long time since I saw him. Tell him everyone's behind him here, and to give them hell." Kurt grinned as he slapped Taylor's dad on the back, lightly staggering the much more slender albeit taller man.
"I'll do that," her dad chuckled. Turning to Taylor, Kurt gave her a quick hug.
"Have fun, kid. Try to keep your dad out of trouble."
"That might be hard, Uncle Kurt," she giggled, returning the hug. "You know what he's like sometimes."
"Yeah, once he gets the bit between his teeth and there's labor shenanigans afoot, he's off," Kurt snickered, making her dad sigh while still looking amused. "Trip him and sit on him if he gets too worked up, that'll probably work."
Taylor looked dubiously at her dad. "He's taller than me."
"For now. You're going to be a tall one when you're done growing." Kurt grinned.
"And he fights dirty."
"Damn right he does. It's the only way to fight," the man chortled, causing her to laugh as well as her dad. Turning back to her dad, he went on, "Seriously, Danny, good luck with everything. Those bastards have fucked people like us over for way too long. That thing was just part of it." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the mouth of the bay and the no-longer-present ship, which would have been invisible anyway as it was dark due to being half past four in the morning. "We all know who was behind that. Maybe you'll get a chance do something about it, or at least help someone else with that."
Her dad nodded, sighing a little. "I know, and I hope so. But it's an uphill struggle at best. Some people think of themselves as untouchable, and unfortunately for a lot of purposes… they're not wrong."
"Only until they piss off enough other people, Danny." Kurt shrugged. "There are limits to everything. Sooner or later, you go past those limits… shit's gonna get real. Might be they need a reminder of that before it goes that far."
"True enough. Oh well, I suppose we'll see once we all get there and find out who else turned up and what they're doing."
"Nothing good, that sort never do anything good," Kurt grumbled. He tossed the keys to his truck in his hand, then put them in his pocket. "Bring back some good souvenirs whatever happens. Maybe one of those little golden statues Hollywood gives out every year?" He smirked as Taylor started laughing again. "They probably won't miss one or two."
Her dad gave him a narrow look, then shook his head. "Within every dockworker beats the heart of a larcenous thieving magpie, doesn't it?"
Kurt gave him a thumb's up, grinned, and turned to leave. "Just use your imagination, Danny," he called over his shoulder with a wave. Taylor and her dad watched him go out the door of the train station whistling cheerfully, then looked at each other.
"Don't," her father warned as she raised an eyebrow. "Please do not steal an Oscar."
"Me? Steal something?" she asked, shocked, her hand to her mouth. "You must be thinking of someone else."
"Yes, my other daughter, who is far crazier than this one," he snorted, shaking his head, then putting his arm over her shoulders for a moment. "This one is calm and responsible. As I keep telling myself. Possibly erroneously."
"Yeah, calm and responsible. That's me!" she chirped with a grin.
Smiling a little, he looked at his watch. "Come on, we've got about ten minutes before the train leaves. Let's get on board and find a seat. Got everything?" He patted his coat, checking the inside pocket for the tickets, then nodded when she hefted her backpack in one hand and her bag in the other in reply. "Great. Let's go."
"Age before beauty," she invited, indicating the way deeper into the Brockton Bay rail station. Grumbling under his breath in a way that made her giggle, he preceded her towards their train. Soon they were sitting down having stowed their luggage, Taylor pulling out her laptop and her dad a book as they settled down for the trip. It would only take a little over an hour and twenty minutes to get to Boston, then they had to transfer to the train to New York, which was another not quite four hours. After that they'd meet up with her dad's friend Kyle, the ILA guy, and a number of other union reps from up and down the east coast, before they all made their way to the airport, meeting up with more people there, for the flight to LA which would land at just after seven in the evening.
It would be a long day before they got to their hotel, but both of them were well prepared, and Taylor was looking forward to it for a number of reasons. As well as feeling very pleased about being able to go on a trip with her dad, something she missed from years back.
Glancing at the empty seat next to him, she smiled a little sadly, then opened her laptop and began reading a college-level biology text while making notes now and then. Even as she was doing that, she was also making sure that all her various level two creatures were either hibernating in the case of the drillipedes, deep under the city and far from anywhere someone might ever stumble across them, or settled into place in the case of the spider-crabs. Her glow-spiders were happily wandering around in the tunnels all over the place under the docks, with two in the house's attic, keeping an eye on the place.
She didn't expect anything to happen to prevent her staying linked to them all, but as she hadn't yet tested her power's ability to connect to a level two creature at more than currently about sixty miles distance, she wasn't totally certain it would work. Nearly totally certain, but not one hundred percent so. As a result she was making sure that if she did lose contact, her friends and her city would be safe until she got back.
This trip, among quite a few other benefits, would be an excellent test of just how great her range was, she thought as she scanned the city looking for trouble, checking in on Lucy and her other friends for a moment too. She'd said goodbye to the former last night and promised to call when she got to LA to let her know she was OK, which the other girl had insisted on. Much to her affectionate amusement. Lucy really was a good friend and a nice person.
After a short announcement which made both of them and the half dozen other mostly still nearly asleep passengers in their car look up for a moment, the train jerked a couple of times, then slowly began pulling out of the station. She watched from the outside, listening to the whine of the engine turbochargers, as the train gradually accelerated. It was a sound she was very familiar with, having lived close enough to the railway to have heard it in the distance her entire life, and she remembered lying in bed when she was very young imagining all the places the train went and wondering if she'd ever be able to go there too. The world had seemed like a very large place when she was that age.
It still was, of course, but her abilities had definitely affected her understanding of that, as had growing older. Lowering his book, her dad peered out the window into the darkness, streetlights passing occasionally as the railway paralleled or crossed a road before going back to running through cuttings and industrial areas which were nearly completely dark and dead at this hour. "I haven't been on a train for years," he commented, glancing at her. "Kind of miss it. I did a lot more traveling when you were young."
"I remember," she replied quietly. "Mom and I waving from the porch as you left, and sometimes if you were away long enough, getting a letter from another city. Seems like a very long time ago for some reason."
He smiled faintly. "It was always good coming back. Passing the end of the bay, seeing the lights of the city in front as we came around the curve… I knew I'd be home soon, and could relax. Right about here, actually." He pointed across the carriage out the window on the far side, Taylor looking to see the aircraft warning light on top of the Medhall building blinking several miles away. "After this point, I was home. I liked traveling, but it was always a relief when I got back."
He sighed for a moment, looking at the seat next to him, Taylor knowing exactly what he was thinking as it was the same thing she'd thought just a couple of minutes ago. Meeting her eyes, he smiled a little, clearly knowing she knew but not wanting to say anything. She smiled back, then both of them returned to their reading, comfortable in their silent memories.
The train kept rumbling on through the darkness, still accelerating, while Taylor watched what was happening to her links.
By the time the lights of Boston came into view as the train rounded a corner, far in the distance, she was feeling very pleased. So far the link was totally unaffected. She was gratified to see she'd been right up to now. On the other hand, they'd only come about forty miles, so it wasn't surprising based on her earlier tests. New York was another two hundred miles further, which would be a much better test.
Disembarking from the train when it jolted to a final stop, they gathered up their belongings and followed the other passengers out onto the platform. Her dad looked around then pointed. "That way. We've got…" He looked at his watch. "Forty minutes to get to South Station. We'll take a cab, I don't feel like walking that far this early in the morning." He yawned widely, making her grin. "And I want to grab a coffee first before I fall asleep again."
"What about breakfast?" she asked.
"We can get something on the train," he suggested, walking towards the coffee shop he'd spotted, Taylor accompanying him. "Although if you're hungry we can get a sandwich."
Five minutes later they were outside next to the taxi rank on Causeway Street. Her dad approached the first taxi and had a short conversation as Taylor looked around, then up at the building, several of which were a fair bit taller than average back home. She was investigating, as she'd been doing the entire time, all the arthropods in range and watching the entire area with interest. There seemed to be a lot more people around than there would be in Brockton Bay at this hour of the morning, most of whom appeared to be somewhat less cautious than they'd be there. Probably because, she assumed, that while Boston had some severely dangerous Parahumans in the form of Accord, the Butcher, and the Teeth, they were mostly less obvious than the E88, the ABB, and the Merchants were. Or had been until quite recently.
As her dad waved her over, the taxi driver got out and opened the trunk of his car. They put their luggage in and he slammed it, then all three got in and he quickly pulled away. "Long trip?" he said over his shoulder.
"Yeah, going to LA for business," her dad replied, looking back from where he'd been peering out at the scenery. "Via New York. It's going to be a long day."
"Nicer weather out there though," the driver chuckled, leaning forwards to look up at the heavily overcast very early morning sky, the clouds visible in the glow from the city. "It's gonna rain again soon, but you'll have plenty of sun there. God, I miss the sun…"
Her dad smiled. "We've had some but you're right, spring can't come fast enough."
"Where you guys from?" the driver queried curiously.
"Brockton Bay."
"Oh, shit. You had that fuck off big storm last week, right? I saw it on the news." He looked back for a moment, then forward again. "Hell of a thing. That video of the sunken ship vanishing into the water was seriously impressive."
"It was, yes," her dad replied, nodding. "But it's good that it's gone. Been a pain in the ass for way too long."
"So I heard, yeah." The man hit the horn, slamming on the brakes as another car swerved around them and dived down a side street. "Fucking idiot who the hell taught you to fucking drive…" he muttered viciously as he accelerated again. "Sorry about that. People can't drive for shit around here," he added over his shoulder.
"Don't worry, I've seen it before, believe me," her dad assured him, looking mildly amused. Taylor was listening but at the same time she was looking around deep underground, plotting out various tunnels and cavities. Boston, at least this part of it, seemed to have plenty of them, although nowhere near the density of those than Brockton Bay did. Finding an appropriate place, she smiled internally as she located a suitable spider in it. Forming a level two link, she blinked as the creature joined her network fully, the tiny awareness of the creature seeming slightly surprised.
It didn't take more than a couple of seconds to choose the right aspects she wanted from her library to upgrade the new level two creature to a variant of a crab-spider. And just like that, her awareness expanded out to a mile and a half surrounding the creature, the cab at the edge of that range. North Station was well inside it.
Pleased that it had worked the way she'd thought it would, Taylor made a few tweaks to her new friend, making sure that if the link didn't reach all the way to New York or LA the creature would wait for her to get back into contact while remaining well out of range of any human, she settled back feeling quite satisfied with her progress.
She repeated the process twice more before they arrived outside South Station. The new crab-spiders gave her awareness of a large chunk of the middle of Boston, covering the financial district and, she was amused to discover, the Boston PRT building which was near a big park close to the water. Or rather the main Boston PRT building, as apparently there were several branches in the city, unlike the one in Brockton where it was all congregated into one very big and very heavily reinforced structure near the harbor.
Having paid the cab driver with a twenty dollar bill, they got their luggage out and headed into the station. Not long afterwards the two were sitting, this time side by side, in a rather more populated train car as it pulled out of the station. Taylor was next to the window and was watching the first hints of dawn showing to the east, while monitoring her three crab-spiders and mentally plotting out the best way to expand her awareness of Boston. She wasn't planning on going all in on interfering with crime like she did at home, mostly due to a slight worry that if anyone noticed it wasn't entirely impossible they'd correlate people traveling with odd occurrences and come to a conclusion she didn't want them to come to. But on the other hand if she could lend a tiny little buggy hand here and there in a way no one would suspect, that was entirely reasonable in her view.
When the trip was over, then she'd think about ways to try to help on a larger scale. But for now, this was mostly precautionary and experimental. Not to mention fun.
By the time the sun had risen enough to start illuminating things properly she'd dropped a number of new crab-spiders in convenient places along the route, not giving continuous coverage, but putting them in areas that had good cover to make them impossible to locate without massive effort she'd easily detect. It gave her a way to amuse herself during the trip, and she'd also found some interesting new creatures in the process, which she'd guide back to her local nodes for addition to the library. A number of new fireflies, several spiders of various types, some wasps, and several more she hadn't previously encountered. Sadly no more Asian Hornets though, which was a pity. She liked Asian Hornets. On the other hand they were quite rare in the US from what she'd read, being an invasive species and all, so it wasn't all that surprising. Encountering two of them in Brockton Bay had been a very outside chance she was pleased to have had.
The time passed fairly quickly, her dad getting up an hour into the journey and going to find some food, coming back a little later with drinks, sandwiches, and snacks for both of them. She'd gladly accepted hers, smiling at him in thanks as he sat down once more. Once they'd eaten, he put his book away and pulled out a notebook of his own, which he busied himself writing in, lost to the outside world. She leaned over and looked at the page, seeing he was making notes on things to discuss in LA, and questions he wanted to ask along with names she didn't recognize.
Leaving him to his work she resumed thinking, reading, leaving her gifts to arthropod unity every now and then, and watching everyone on the train and near its path go about their business. Content with the way things were going and looking forward to new places.
And highly pleased that the link all the way back to Brockton Bay was still working perfectly. 'Told you it would work,' she thought at her power, which seemed to shrug with a small sense of amused resignation and acceptance of how things now functioned.
When they rolled into New York, she was staring out the window in amazement at the size of the buildings visible in the distance. They were enormous, compared to back at home or even in Boston. She'd seen photos and video but there was something about seeing them with her own eyes that was quite different in a hard to describe manner. Eventually having turned west the train slid into a tunnel under the East River and her human eyes lost sight of the scenery, but all the other ones were looking around with great interest. And she'd put a dozen nodes in place in hidden spots before the train finally stopped at Pennsylvania Station. Only a few minutes later they were moving with a throng of passengers towards the main concourse. Taylor had already picked out what she thought were the people waiting for them, a medium height sandy haired man roughly her dad's age standing in a group of nine other people, men and women both, who were talking to each other and carrying or next to various items of luggage. All of them gave off somehow an air she recognized from people she knew back home in her dad's union.
"Is your friend Kyle about this tall, sort of reddish blonde hair, mustache, blue eyes?" she asked him, leaning closer so he'd hear her over the noise of the crowd, and holding her hand roughly at her hairline.
"The mustache is new, but the rest fits," he replied, keeping his voice low enough that no one else could overhear. "Where?"
"Off to the left, about forty yards, behind that escalator," she told him, nodding in the relevant direction. He nodded back and they changed course slightly, soon rounding the obstruction and finding the group she'd been watching. Mind you, she'd been and still was watching everyone…
"Hey, Kyle, long time no see," her dad said as they approached the man from the side, making him look around then smile broadly.
"Danny! Great, you made it! How was the trip?" He turned and embraced her dad, who responded in kind, before they stepped back.
"Not bad. Early start, but I got about an hour's sleep on the train, and I've got enough coffee in me to keep me going for a while yet," her dad replied cheerfully. "How are you?"
"Good. Very good, really. Apprehensive about this idiocy, of course, but hopeful too." Kyle smiled, then turned to look at Taylor, who smiled back at him. "And this is Taylor. God, I haven't seen you since you were what, about two? You've grown."
He chuckled when she laughed and replied, "Thirteen years will do that, Mr Richards."
"Kyle, please, Taylor. Your dad and I go way back, and we don't stand on formalities." He held out his hand which she shook after putting her bag down. "I'm afraid this will probably be kind of boring for you, but at least you'll get a few days in the sun."
"I'm looking forward to it," she assured him entirely truthfully.
"Good, good. Right, Danny, you know most of the people here. Georgia Lindow, from Chicago, William Trotter out of Virginia with his wife Teri, Harry Vernon from Savannah, Charlie Zebrowski from Boston and his wife Petra, Nick Jameston from Portland, and that's Liz Knowles from Baltimore with her wife Jill. Everyone, Danny Hebert out of Brockton Bay and his daughter Taylor."
Everyone shook hands with everyone else for a few moments, various greetings being said. Her dad clearly knew the couple from Baltimore and the guy from Portland quite well from what she picked up, and was friendly with most of the others, the two he didn't know personally being William Trotter and his wife. The former, a man of around fifty, quite tall and very heavily constructed, his hair barely there any more, grinned at her dad when he grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. "Heard you finally got rid of that eyesore in your bay, Hebert. About time."
Her dad laughed as several of the others smiled. "Yeah, that was one storm I am very pleased to have had. Pity it wasn't about fifteen years earlier but better late than never, I guess."
"Going to open up a lot of trade once you get your infrastructure working properly again," the man added. "If you need anything we can help with, let me know. Brockton and Portland have deep roots if you go back a ways."
"Thanks. I'll remember that, and mention it to the mayor next time I talk to him."
"Your guy any good?"
"He's got promise. For a politician, he's honest."
"Stays bought when you buy him?" William joked, winking at Taylor who grinned.
"To be fair to the man, while we've had many run-ins, he's very much against that sort of thing and he means it," her dad replied, chuckling. "I can't say he's a friend as such, but he's at least an honorable adversary, I guess. And he's doing a good job with all the corruption crap that's going on at the moment."
"Yeah, I heard about that." William whistled slightly. "Sounds like one hell of a mess. A super-villain managed to do all that and no one noticed for over a decade?"
Her dad shrugged. "He was a sneaky fucker. And caused a mess that's going to be a problem for a long time. At least he's gone now and with the ship vanishing too, things are looking up."
"Assuming that the assholes who kicked all that shit off don't do something even worse next time," Charlie Zebrowski put in with a glower. Not at anyone there, but he clearly wasn't happy about something or someone, Taylor could see at a glance. "Some of the things I've heard being talked about… Not good. Not good at all."
"No," Kyle agreed soberly. "Which is why we're doing this. If we don't take the chance to stop it before it really gets going, we might not get another chance. And if it goes too far, well… Could be it gets very, very bad."
Everyone there nodded, even Taylor, because she knew more than enough from talking to her dad about what could happen in the medium to long term.
Looking at his phone, Kyle added, "We'd better get moving. Take the E to Jamaica, Air Train to JFK. We can all grab lunch when we meet everyone there. Hopefully the flight doesn't get delayed like the last time I went to LA. It's going to be a long enough day as it is." He shook his head, then pointed past them. "That way. Onward, troops, to glory!" Grabbing his bag he heaved it over his shoulder and started walking rapidly, as everyone else exchanged amused glances then followed. Taylor was giggling to herself, finding this all very educational.
"He's… enthusiastic… I guess," she murmured to her dad who was grinning to himself.
"Always has been. Kind of nuts in a good way. And a very good Union man." He smiled at her then they hurried after the others. A bit under three quarters of an hour and two changes later they were walking through JFK airport towards the departures area, Taylor looking around with interest at the sheer number of people milling around. She could hear thousand of conversations all about them, from thousands of people, those working at the airport, and those going through it. People were arriving from all over the country and indeed the world, or going from here to many other destinations. She found herself wondering what it had been like years ago when more than half the planet hadn't descended into Parahuman-influenced trouble. Most of Africa, for example, was a no-go area for anyone who had a choice, a lot of Central American, South America, and the Middle East was very dangerous or completely avoided for a lot of good reasons, China was completely cut off from the rest of the world, and so on. Sure, back in the late seventies and the early eighties the Cold War was still in full swing meaning a lot of those places were pretty hazardous at best and completely impossible to enter or leave from what she'd read, but in a very different way to these days.
There had been a brief period in the mid eighties where it looked like things would improve enormously, until super-villains and all the trouble they brought with them reared their heads up and life became far more complicated than anyone wanted. And eventually the Endbringers arrived, which really fucked things up. One after another, they'd started dragging the world down bit by bit.
She sighed a little as she thought about what she'd learned in school and online about how many people died through those attacks, and from all the other Parahuman disasters over the last thirty years. It was utterly horrific to think too much about. Taylor felt that if she could try to help fix some of the things that had occurred or were the result of problems of that nature, it might not reverse all the trouble villains created, but it would at least not make things worse. Perhaps that was the best she could hope for, perhaps she'd figure out something better, but she was at least doing her part. And removing the ship had been a big step for Brockton Bay if nothing else.
"Deep thoughts?" her dad queried as he glanced at her while they waited in line for the airline desk, the others of their group ahead of them. Kyle had located the rest of their party, several people from other ports on the East Coast who'd flown up to New York, and introduced them before they'd got in line. Apparently more would be flying directly to LA too. Along with all the west coast union representatives who'd be there as well. Not to mention those representing allied but non-port related unions, who would be present in a show of solidarity. It was kind of impressive how all these people from all over the country were pulling together to help each other and those they spoke for, and made her proud her dad and all his friends and coworkers were part of it.
"Kind of, yeah," she nodded. "I was looking around at all the people and wondering what it would be like if not for Parahuman trouble, and Endbringers, and all the chaos over the decades. What we'd find if none of that had happened and we were here." She was keeping her voice down, since even mentioning the word 'Endbringer' tended to make some people nervous, as if it would attract one from nowhere.
Who really knew? Maybe it would? No one was sure where the damn things came from or what they wanted.
He looked around for a few seconds, then back to her. "An interesting thought, yes. I expect things would be very different in some ways and very similar in others. Probably a lot more people for a start."
"There's already more people than I think I've ever seen in one place before," she replied with a small smile. "I'm not sure how many more you could fit in here."
"Bigger building?" he suggested. "More travel, larger airports, probably larger planes too… I think that's what it's like on Aleph, for that matter. I'd expect a lot of things have changed between us over the years. We don't hear everything from there, after all, nor they from here."
"I guess, yeah. Makes sense. Even so, this is a lot of people." She looked down the long building, a couple of dozen departure desks each with their own queues of up to hundreds of people, and far more in other areas of the airport. The sheer quantity of inhabitants New York had was incredible, and through the various crab-spiders she already had lurking in the subways and other underground areas the city was absolutely riddled with, she was sensing more people than the entire population of Brockton Bay.
It was fascinating.
Although, despite having a vast underground network below the streets, it lacked a certain air of mystery home had. Possibly because those underground areas were in many places packed with nearly as many people as the streets above. Even the service corridors, and places the public never saw, had quite a few people working in them. At home she was nearly the only intelligent inhabitant of a lot of the subterranean areas, and definitely the only one who even knew most of it existed. Here, although the volume was even larger, almost all of it was much newer, far more well known, and vastly more traveled. There were areas that were clearly a lot older than most of it, including buried rivers just like those in Brockton albeit none of the ones she'd so far located being as large as the main one under her home city, and lots of ancient storm drains too, along with a truly staggering number of cellars and underground rooms, but…
It wasn't the same. Something was missing, something she couldn't quite describe even to herself yet.
Not enough eldritch, possibly, she thought with an inner grin.
Well, she could help there. Very quietly and carefully, of course.
Everywhere needed a little eldritch. It added character.
While they slowly made their way to the counter, she amused herself by cataloging the number of different languages being spoken, mapped out the airport itself to a high resolution, examined all the planes and listened to the pilots and air traffic controllers going about their work, and generally got a feel for how an airport worked. It was a very busy place and obviously took a hell of a lot of effort from many highly trained people to keep it running smoothly.
Eventually they reached the desk, and Kyle started talking to the woman doing the checking in process, handing over quite a stack of paperwork. That took nearly ten minutes to get through but finally Taylor and her dad were putting their checked luggage on the scales, then watching it vanish into the bowels of the airport system. Taylor had all their bags tagged discreetly with insects and kept monitoring their progress, partly out of a sense of caution just in case something went wrong, but mainly out of pure interest.
A little later they'd made their way through the security gate, the scanners, the questions, and the general air of 'I know you're hiding something' all the people there projected, and were out the other side. She was reflecting with amusement that none of the people involved knew quite how much she was hiding nor had any way to find it, when Kyle who was waiting for the last person through to join them sighed in relief as William came out of the scanner area with a somewhat irritated expression.
"That guy is way too fond of touching places I don't want touched by strangers for my liking," the man announced as he arrived with the rest of them, provoking several chuckles.
"Thank god that's all done," Kyle said, sounding tired. "Now we can relax. Flight's in just under two hours so we have time for a meal, and to be honest I'm starving. Missed breakfast and I could really do with a drink."
"Sounds like a damn good idea, Kyle," Liz Knowles commented with a broad smile. "Let's find something worth the effort."
"And the cost," her wife added with a knowing look. "Airports aren't the cheapest places to eat."
"No, but there's a decent restaurant that way," Kyle replied, pointing right. "Let's see what they've got."
Everyone followed as he walked off, Taylor's stomach rumbling and getting an amused glance from Liz. "That sounds hungry," the older woman remarked. "Probably best to feed it before it attacks."
"It hardly ever kills anyone so we're probably safe," Taylor replied with a grin, making the woman laugh.
"Good to know."
The meal was actually pretty decent, Taylor thought, although the prices on the menu were indeed impressively high. Her dad shook his head at them but didn't stint on the food. The ILA was picking up the tab, according to Kyle, so no one needed to go hungry. By the time they'd finished it was half an hour to boarding, so they paid up, retrieved their carry-on bags, and headed for the gate.
By the time they were on the plane, Taylor was watching the New York PRT headquarters with interest, learning all sorts of fascinating things through the various creatures living in it. She was also still connected to Brockton Bay, and Boston's much smaller network, showing that her ideas about range were so far holding up. The acid test would be during the flight but she was growing more and more sure that there would turn out not to be a practical range limit as she'd thought for some time.
Her power really was the best. She prodded it mentally and grinned, while it seemed to purr under the inner praise. Despite it being difficult sometimes, she was very pleased they'd met. And it seemed to reciprocate.
Putting her seat belt on she listened to and watched the safety briefing, while in the hold the spiders she'd snuck onto the bags kept watch, along with the other bugs on board. There were quite a few of them, of course. It was almost impossible to avoid having some sort of arthropod live almost anywhere, and New York was quite a bit warmer than Brockton Bay was, being several hundred miles further south. Airliners were no less likely to have tiny passengers on them than anywhere else was. Which played nicely to her strengths…
While they taxied out from the terminal building and slowly made their way towards the assigned runway for takeoff, she watched, fascinated, as the pilots went through the checklists, talked to the tower, and did all the piloting things she'd seen on TV many times. Back at home, Lucy was in school listening to her math teacher, Amy and Vicky were quietly arguing in class about their mom, Armsmaster was talking to Dragon about a way to clean all the debris out of the bay more rapidly, Director Piggot was complaining to her deputy about the Chief Director being a pain in her ass… In other words things were pretty much going normally, she thought as she sent a mosquito into Kaiser's helmet right as he was lecturing some of the E88, through his eye hole, then landed it on his ear and made it produce a high pitched whining sound that caused him to smack himself on the head then start swearing viciously.
Grinning a little, she looked out the window towards the center of New York, thinking that she'd need to explore it thoroughly at some point. At least above ground. She was already doing that below.
Feeling that on the whole she was pretty pleased with her life right now, Taylor got pressed back in the seat as the jet went to full throttle then lunged forward as the pilot released the brakes. LA awaited, and so many new bugs for her to collect.
And who knew what else might happen? She was keen to find out.
The plane lifted off and climbed steeply with her grinning at the sensation, which was almost as good as flying with her own wings, but in a very different way.