A Comedy of Ferrous [Worm/Mistborn]

[therewolf]

A Comedy of Ferrous

Spoiler: Introduction

The setting is Worm, with only the magic from Mistborn clumsily tacked on through powers. It's also kind of a homebrew version of that, but the additions should quickly be obvious to anyone familiar with it.
Most things are explained in-story, but basic knowledge of the books/system would help it all make more sense. You will miss some jokes and hints otherwise, if nothing else, and a few things might seem to come out of nowhere.
It is already finished—so hopefully nobody points out any too-glaring plot holes—and my plan is to post a chapter a week, mostly. The chapters do get smaller, though, so that might change depending on feedback.
Also, feedback would be appreciated. I'm curious to hear how soon people work out where this is headed, because some parts surprised me as I was writing them.
Take this however you want, but I got a lot of search engine referrals to mental health support hotlines while looking up stuff for this. I promise there's a happy ending!
Allomancy metals chart, for reference.

Chapter 1: Lurcher

[Prelude]

—with a sudden snap, I was myself again, climbing unsteadily to my feet.

Okay.
The capes wouldn't help. Villain, or hero, or whatever the difference was supposed to be. I wasn't sure why I had expected anything else.
How could I do this? I might be strong enough to shift it around the engine block, maybe? Could only try.
Taking advantage of a sudden lull, I staggered across to the other side, kneeling down.
Where had all this blood come from? Was there someone inside when it got thrown? I couldn't worry about them, too.
"Be ready to move when there's room, okay?" I instructed.
Blue lightning was starting to dance all over the place, and who the fuck was doing that? Dauntless? We had to get out of here.
Bracing my legs, I pushed. The car finally moved, almost before I'd even touched it, more than I'd expected. Ignore that—not important.
My gaze dropped.
"Emma?"
Things were really flying around now.
"Em—" I forced out, and felt something come rushing at me from behind.

[Lurcher 1.1]

"—ma," I whispered, something thick and heavy filling my mouth.

I could hear, somewhere close, someone screaming.
Screaming abuse, screaming apologies, screaming for help—at theirself, to their mother, to their father, who I thought might all have been long lost to them in this moment.

It had been a little while, it turned out.
A nurse found me awake pretty quickly at the next check-in, explained where I was, explained he'd already explained this, and went to fetch other people.
I must have drifted away again then, before they got back.

I wasn't very aware of events for some more time after that, which I know is something I should be grateful for. There are fragments, but they're not worth remembering, let alone sharing.
I was very fortunate in general. I heard that one a lot, too. Everyone seemed to have their own spin on it.

The next moment I clearly recall, I was babbling to another nurse—I think another, I'm not certain—about how I was fine actually and was ready to go home now.
When I realized this was happening, it was so surprising that I stopped talking and was left listening to the unfamiliar radio that I knew I hated.
Almost immediately I started back up again, saying much the same thing in much the same way but hopefully more convincingly.

Following a few more sessions of me arguing with various people that yes, I was awake, and had no intention of 'resting,' Dad came rushing in. He must have been informed sometime, I guess.
When I saw him, I gave a faint half-smile and felt so relieved—knowing at least he would believe me—that I immediately fell back asleep, which probably didn't help my case any.
After waking in the more usual way, however much later that was, I smiled at him again—it felt off with everything still attached, but he didn't seem to care—and then it was pretty much all over bar the paperwork.

[Lurcher 1.2]

Dad stayed while someone made arrangements to have all the monitors and such disconnected, but, at my quiet request, left for most of the actual process of them doing it.

One nurse kept a surprisingly hot hand on my shoulder when they were removing the feeding tube, which left my nose and throat feeling dry, burnt, scratched, and oddly empty.
My mouth tasted disgusting. My tongue still didn't seem normal. Eating would feel a little funny at first. They promised that would all go away soon.
When everything was out, I was just glad to be able to curl up and pull the thin sheets over my head until Dad got back.

A series of nurses stopped in to say that they hoped I recovered completely soon. They wished all the best for me. I didn't recognize any of them, but some of them felt vaguely trustworthy and likeable anyway. It was strange, and a little unsettling. Like my body had been making friends with people without my involvement.

"Shouldn't scar too badly at all if you keep up the aftercare," I was told as I poked at my face in the mirror.
I felt numb, where I didn't feel dead.
"Great. So they won't interfere with my shaving?" I asked weakly.
The nurse looked pityingly at me, which was at least a small piece of normality. Emma looked at me just the same way when I made jokes.

A doctor gestured happily at my shoulder.
"—some shards stuck in your upper back here, but don't worry, we got all those—"
"—body did most of the hard work for you while—"
"—not too much worse now than some bad cat scratches—"
"—see a fair number of Hookwolf injuries here, and—"
"—optimistic outcome, and with some rest—"
I sat there silently until she stopped speaking.

[Lurcher 1.3]

Dad was—being supportive. Being there for me when I wanted him. Which was not right then.
I felt weirdly hurt that he seemed to be coping so well. I had thought he considered Emma another daughter, the same way I once considered her my only sister.
He'd had more time, or more conscious time, to process things, I knew, but really. Would he have been able to behave this normally if I'd been the one he lost? A part of me almost wanted to ask, and an even more shameful part almost wanted to test it.
I knew he was staying strong for me, and I knew how hard that was for him. He hadn't managed it for a while after Mom died.
Maybe the secret was simple experience. Wasn't that most of what being an adult was? Maybe he had just got great at acting. Maybe his world had never actually gone back to feeling real, like mine didn't now.

Ever since I woke up, I had been plagued by visions.
Sometimes blue lines overlaid the world in random patterns, like I was sitting in the center of an LSD-fueled spider's web, all of it vanishing with my next eyeblink.
Sometimes lights flickered in Dad's head when he was watching me eat meals with him, but died away again almost immediately. That was relatable, at least.
Sometimes there would be a day between them, and in the hospital they could occasionally come in fits.
Either I had a superpower, maybe the worst one never recorded, or I was going mad. I wasn't sure which would be less welcome. I didn't want to investigate if it was either, or neither, or both, only leave it as uncertain and undetermined as the rest of me.

This numbness was going to drive me insane, if I wasn't already.
Pain was your body's way of telling you something was wrong, wasn't it? I'd been taught that, and it had always seemed reliable enough before.
Something this wrong, extending this long, with no response from systems I'd never before had to question—? It made me wonder what else in me was failing, all unknown.

I was just so exhausted, constantly. I recognized the symptoms, of course, remembered how Dad behaved after we lost Mom.
Was that a crazy comparison to draw? I couldn't find the motivation to care about that, either.
I had no appetite, no desire to do anything. Sleeping felt like it took up all my time, and after waking I was still tired.

[Lurcher 1.4]

It took place on a weekend. I'd lost track of the exact day by that point, but I know they had arranged it that way so everyone could attend. I think they might have been putting it off, hoping I would be able to—should I be grateful?
Dad dealt with my outfit somehow. I'd outgrown the one I wore to Mom's by about a foot.
Madison and Julia said something appropriate to me that I didn't quite catch. Anne had come back into town to be there for her parents. Dad and I stood with her and the rest of the family.
It's mostly all a blur to me now. Or maybe it was all a blur at the time and I'm remembering it perfectly. I'm not sure.
I don't recall anything of the actual service. The casket wasn't open, obviously, which I hadn't realized I was worried about.

My clearest memory from that day is of a gravestone.
The first date on it had been a constant in my life, for almost as much of my life as I could remember. When we were younger, I considered it one of the major holidays. It didn't belong there.
The second date—it should never have meant anything to me. It should have been just another Tuesday that I forgot nearly before it finished, only maybe momentarily remarkable for being the first day back at school.
Seeing them paired together—hurt. Like the second was tainting the first. Poisoning it. Bleeding the life away.
I don't know how long and how still I must have stood for it to have registered so clearly, but I felt like they were both carved into me, too, now.

[Lurcher 1.5]

We settled into a routine.

Dad had got me out of school indefinitely while I was in hospital. I think he used the old excuse that I'd been in a coma and the doctors had no idea when I would finish waking up properly. They bought it, the chumps.
He didn't push me to go back. I spent the free time watching TV on mute with my eyes closed. I told him the sound hurt my head, which wasn't even a lie. Everything seemed to.

I changed my clothes when Dad asked me to and washed my body when he insisted, quietly disconnected from the process.
Sometimes I would start to do something but feel weirdly off-kilter, like I had too few limbs.

"Taylor, time for dinner."
"Didn't we just eat?" I asked, reaching for the memory. "Macaroni?"
"That was Thursday, I think. Come get this while it's hot."

People had called at the house after I was released, but I'd told Dad I was tired and he'd turned them away for me. I don't know who it was, but I couldn't deal with them right then.
My phone I powered off and left in my bedside table. Dad knew he could contact me with the landline.

Dad had been spending most evenings out with Uncle Alan. To make certain he was only drinking enough to cope, I think, or something else adult and responsible.
I was glad he could be there for him, that he could be there for someone, when neither of us had any idea how he could be here for me.

It was getting late into the afternoon. I thought I should probably eat something so I could tell Dad that dinner wasn't the first thing I'd had today when he got home and made it.
I stood up—and the world lurched around me.
I sat right back down again, groggily, very aware of the pulse thudding angrily in my temples.
I knew this feeling, didn't I? I hadn't felt it in years, not since Mom had that talk with me not long after I first started my monthlies, but—
After a minute I stood up again, less quickly, and made my way to the medicine chest on top of the refrigerator.

Two pills and a half-glass of water later, I felt a small bead of energy unravel inside me.
I blinked, slowly. It couldn't be that simple, could it?
I looked at the blue lines stretching out strongly all around me, then re-read past the fine net shining through the box.
Iron.

[Lurcher 1.6]

I did eat in the end. Just a tuna sandwich while I gathered my thoughts together.

There were blue lines, of varying widths, streaming out from somewhere around my breastbone—thousands of them, it looked like—in every direction around me. One leading to the fridge was maybe a pinkyfingerswidth. A couple dozen thin threads from my charm bracelet, the charms themselves slightly thicker. Some spiderweb strands were even coming from my sandwich if I held it close, which was putting me off it just a little.
A lot of them wove their way through walls and travelled out I had no idea how far. Or, wait, no, that wasn't true—I could feel exactly how distant any one of them was if I concentrated. It felt like the butter knife in my real hand was being gripped by another one at the end of its line, and I was as aware of how far it ran as I was of the length of my actual arm. It was just another part of me.
If I gave it a mental command, I felt like I could also—and the knife damn near broke my wrist trying to fly towards my chest.
I could also kill myself any time I wanted, I suppose, which wasn't nothing.

Much more hesitantly, going around to the other side of the kitchen island first to be safe, I tried the same thing with the thickest line coming from the oven.
With a tiny twist of my mind, I was pulled suddenly towards it—and it juddered its way towards me too, if much less so.
Well.
After pushing the oven back into place—considerably more work with physical arms—I looked to the pool of power I could feel sitting comfortably in my stomach and, with another little brain-flex, completely tamped out the burning feeling that was slowly consuming it. Suddenly the lines were all gone, and I blinked at how dull the world seemed without them.

On, off, on, off, on.
The lines were leading to everything metal around me, as far as I could tell. There was one line per thing—usually roughly in the middle of the metal, but with an effort that point could be shifted. Bigger objects seemed to have thicker lines, and I guess that matched up to a phantom feeling of heft to some of them that I hadn't quite been able to place before. Moving closer to the source made a line brighten, and moving away made it fainten until it eventually vanished, which happened more quickly for the thinner ones.
Focusing on something a great deal weightier, out in the street somewhere, I gave another—much weaker, but more sustained—pull and felt my socks slowly slipping along the floor towards it. The position of whatever this thing was didn't seem to change.

I looked out of the window, thinking, then turned it off again and started putting together dinner for myself and Dad. It had been a little while since we'd had anything that took much time to prep.

[Lurcher 1.7]

Dad's relief at seeing me standing up and doing something when he got in was almost visible, but he didn't seem to want to jinx it by talking too close to the subject.
Instead, he told me about an E88 bust Silhouette had participated in that day with some full members of the Protectorate. It was an historic precedent of some kind, apparently, but I tuned out all the bureaucratic reasoning Dad seemed to think was so important.
I supposed I was happy someone was fighting them, if there had to be fights. I didn't feel any of it in me right then. I nodded along with him anyway.

That night, after everyone sensible was safely insensible, I willingly went outside for the first time in what felt like forever. The only sounds were of the occasional piece of distant, fleeting traffic and the hum of the lamp standing over me.
I looked around. Was this too much of a risk?

I pulled softly on the top of the lamp post and felt myself rise from the ground for a second, shoes scuffing along the pavement a little until I was perfectly underneath it.
Held it again, longer, carefully not pulling in all the way, and I was hovering in place off the ground, head back and framed like an enhaloed angel.
I couldn't stop myself from letting out a sudden quick laugh, and then I dropped back down to earth. Was I going to be able to—?

After a moment of hesitation, I took off at a run and started giving tiny, weak pulls up to metal posts and signs to get air, and parked cars and buildings well in front of me to build up forward momentum. I fell into the rhythm of it surprisingly quickly, and, once it evened out, I was skipping down the street like an expertly cast stone on water.
Worry stopped me from pulling too high up off the ground, about both how I'd land safely and the idea of making even more of a spectacle of myself than this, but it still felt like I was playing around in a better dream than any I'd actually had recently.
I trailed to a halt after a few minutes or a few hours, a surprising distance from home, to pant for air, which quickly turned into laughter. My mind started racing, faster than I'd just been running. I had a power. Couldn't I find some way to use this, some way to help—

Suddenly I recognized where my feet had led me, and all the heat left my body. Hadn't I seen what happened when capes tried to 'help?'
I took a deep breath in, held it until my lungs were creaking, then slowly breathed out.
No.

I might not be able to control everything, I might not be able to control them, but I could control myself.
Also—I didn't have just 'a' power, did I? These blue lines weren't the only strange thing I'd noticed.
What else could I do?

[Lurcher 1.8]

In the morning I told Dad I was going shopping, hoping to clear my head. Not an untruth. It was possible some superhuman ability I found would manage that.
He pressed some money on me, along with a kiss and a hug, and told me to remember my phone.
At this I rolled my eyes, informed him I was a teenage girl and didn't need any reminders about that from a very, very old man, then went to find wherever it had ended up. I still wasn't completely used to carrying the thing, honestly. It didn't feel like any time at all since Emma had put all that effort into making him reconsider his issues with them.

At the drugstore I bought one of every different kind of supplement I could see and asked them if they kept any weirder ones in the back. They did not, or maybe I just looked like a narc. I might have to hit up some of the asian places eventually, but this would do for now.

Making my way with my loot to the nearest fast food place, I ordered a BcRib and a banana shake and sat down to begin my experiments.
All the packets were spread out on the table, sorted by contents. I put the ones marked as containing vitamin D to one side for last, because if I ate those all at once, it would probably be something like a 100x daily dose. What was the toxicity of that? Could you even have too many vitamins?
I turned on my phone and set it to one side while it booted up.

First I repeated my test with iron, which had slowly drained down to nothing overnight, and was comforted to see my lines reaching out all around again. Not a dream, then.
Two kinds of calcium pill were washed down with my drink to no effect. I held my nose for the cod liver oil, and wasn't entirely sure what to do with a powder called creatine but dumped it in my shake and stirred it meditatively with the straw.

My first fresh hit was from copper. It was exciting to see a second well of power forming, and I stupidly grabbed on and used it immediately.
What if it had turned me invisible? What if it had made my skull grow three sizes and glow in the dark?
It didn't. It didn't seem to do anything, actually. Maybe it was making me a little calmer, but that could easily just be relief from not having accidentally outed myself as being a parahuman in the dumbest way possible.

Nothing from selenium, magnesium, any of the vitamins, or turmeric. Hey, I think we had that in our kitchen somewhere—why did I just pay $8 for it?
Someone a few tables away was giving me a strange look.

Chromium got me another pool of possibility, but I kept the smile I wanted to beam out concealed inside my cranium and didn't touch it right then.
I was going to be so healthy after this. Though if I ever got conscripted to the Protectorate they'd have me doing brand deals for mineral supplements, there was no doubt in my mind.

The last thing I picked up there was from zinc, and it was what I'd been expecting to see this entire time.
Intricate arrangements of shifting lights appeared in the heads of everyone around me.

[Lurcher 1.9]

I ate the rest of my meal while I watched the pretty patterns and reflected on what I'd discovered.

Four metals, I was fairly sure. Was that enough to start drawing conclusions?
I should—eat metal? I should eat metal.
That felt weirdly right. Definitely more right than I knew it ought to. Maybe that was a hint from my power?

I pulled over my phone—and could barely focus on the screen for all the bright ironlines shining from its components. Annoying.
I squinted down at it, then raised it above my head, then tried holding it a few inches away from my face.
I was getting looks again, the lights around me synchronizing their movements to match each other.
I blushed.

Turning my iron pool back off, I pulled up the periodic table. Let's see.
Calcium and magnesium did nothing, so it definitely wasn't every metal, disappointingly. I didn't think I'd be working very far down the alkali column, although I vaguely remembered Dad having been prescribed some kind of lithium at one point. He said the side effects were awful.
The esoteric Tinker elements scattered around the chart would be well outside my price range, and I doubted anyone had even tested what happened to someone rich enough and stupid enough to ingest those.
With that thought, I looked up another version of the table that marked the elements by danger, with helpful tags in the legend like 'highly radioactive,' 'historically used as method of murder,' and 'reacts explosively with majority of human body.'
A couple of the ones I already knew as powers were marked as somewhat toxic, which was—a little concerning.
I did have a tentative sweep of the first row of transition metals, though. My thumb ran over the others that weren't marked as being too deadly.

[Lurcher 1.10]

I walked what felt incredibly slowly, somehow already missing ironrunning.
Was this how capes felt? The urge to use your abilities openly, naturally, and the trapped feeling of knowing you couldn't?

There was a simple web of lights moving along close to the ground, about to pass by my feet.
I crouched down and pet the cat, making it butt its head into my hand and start purring, and a small grouping slowly revealed itself to me. Hesitantly I reached out and gave a gentle pull.
That made them brighten more quickly, the purrs getting deeper and louder, and, when I gripped them more confidently, it rolled over to present its belly for my attention.
It didn't suddenly seem any less happy when I let go, and the lights only slowly dimmed down again as my scratches trailed away too.
I sat there meeting its inquisitive stare for a moment, then stood up and let it be.

Catching up on my correspondence took the rest of the walk home.
Generic thank yous to the people sending generic condolences. A more heartfelt response to Gram. I actually felt terrible for only just seeing that one. She should have called, not that I was in a great state to talk much.
Madison asking when I thought I'd make it back to school, everyone missed me. I wasn't sure I was the one everyone missed, but found myself thinking 'soon' and was surprised to realize I meant it. I sent her back a text saying so before I could change my mind.

[Lurcher 1.11]

Hearing the car pull in, I looked up and saw Dad's brain as he must have been walking up the porch steps. I went to get the door for him.

"Taylor," he said with a smile when he saw me, part of his head kindling as I watched. "You're looking so much better."
I smiled back, momentarily confused by the unexpected tightness beside one eye, and the new lights got even brighter, without any influence from me.
"Walked home and got some air. The exercise did me good, I think."
"I'm glad to hear it," he said, and I could see that too.
We made our way to the kitchen, where I sat with my legs dangling off the stool.

"Oh, uh, I bought some supplements," I didn't really explain when he saw the stack on the counter. "Diet's been a little off lately. Thought I might be missing something, you know. Help yourself?"
"Well, as long as you didn't steal them," he said, holding up a bottle of molybdenum and looking at it doubtfully. "I suppose it can't hurt? Can you even have too many vitamins?"
"Yes, in fact," I said, having looked it up myself earlier. "But, uh, one of each is probably fine. And you should still have an actual meal instead of just eating your new treats."
He raised his eyebrows and looked patronizingly at me, his brain strobing (fondly?).
"Yes, dear."

"Speaking of exercise," I said as we were washing the dishes, gracelessly picking up a conversational thread abandoned hours ago. "I was actually thinking about starting to go running."

[Lurcher 1.12]

That evening I placed an order online for the more promising-sounding metals. I'm certain it put me on a dozen Tinker watchlists, whatever claims of privacy the website made, but I wasn't knowledgeable enough to avoid that. If it even were avoidable.
Further testing alone, and some surreptitious attempts during dinner, had failed to find any obvious uses for either chromium or copper. I made fairly large orders for those too, anyway, along with the iron and zinc I thought I would be using a lot of. I'd work them all out, eventually. It was nice to have a project.
That done and out for delivery—within 3 to 5 business days, would you like to pay just $20 to expedite?—I settled in to do some research.

Something I had wondered earlier turned out to be commonly-accepted wisdom within the cape community. People almost always knew how to use their abilities, instinctually. If I felt a strange feeling of certainty about eating metals, I could probably trust it—within reason.
Another concern I'd had was somewhat settled by the theorycrafters. A lot of powers gave you some immunity to any negative effects from directly using them. Pyrokinetics generally being immune to at least their own fire was the classic example, but there were a lot of other weirder ones. I hoped mine covered something similar, because it looked like I was going to be guzzling semi-toxic substances regularly from this point on.
Narwhal was the most common argument against this, because she could hurt herself with her own shields. I wasn't sure how relevant that really was. I suspected people on the internet just liked talking about the beautiful huge naked woman, even if she was Canadian. She came up surprisingly often in any discussion.
If nothing else, I thought, clicking through some pictures, I hope silver isn't one of my metals. I didn't want to have to think of a way to explain to Dad why I'd turned blue and how that was normal and okay.

Turning into bed, I checked on my father. His lights reminded me of the static on an untuned TV. He was dreaming, I guessed.
I had woken up sometime the night before with the realization, fully formed inside me, that I couldn't tell Dad about any of this. It took a second to connect why at the time, but now especially I was glad of my impulsive secrecy.
He did love me—I knew that, even before I could view it laid out so plainly—but there must be limits. I really wasn't sure I could handle actually seeing his fear and distrust if he started to think of me as a cape instead of a daughter. If I lost Dad, I didn't know what would be holding me here any more, and then who would be there for him?
It was a powerfully isolating thought, and it had taken a long while to fall back to sleep with it filling my head so uncomfortably.
That night I fell asleep watching him through my eyelids, wondering what my own feelings looked like.

[Lurcher 1.13]

In. Breathe. Out.

The teachers were being very accommodating. Exactly what they were told about my absence I don't know, but they were treating me like a kicked puppy.
I had missed a little work, but in a lot of classes that just put me level with most of the other kids. I would be caught up with the rest shortly. I shouldn't stress about it.

Madison found me after fourth period, as I dispiritedly left math to go to the cafeteria.
"Taylor," she said, searching my face for something. "It's good to see you again."
"Hi, Mads," I welcomed her back hesitantly, a little thrown off by how formal she was acting. That seemed to settle something for her.
"Although," she continued, her voice raised a little for the benefit of the people staring and with flickers of calculation behind her eyes. "You look terrible. I knew Ems had secretly been dressing you every day."
Shock and embarrassment sprouted in the bystanders as they turned away, but when I laughed out loud, Madison only showed relief. My mind probably looked the same, mixed with gratitude that she could still talk to me normally.
She bent down comically and leapt up to grab me around the neck, dragging me down a little into a hug and feeling extremely pleased with herself when I kept laughing.
"Come on, Tay," she whispered in my ear. "We're missing lunch."

In. Breathe. Out.

Testing for more powers had stalled out almost before it even began. One of the first ones I'd tried, tin, was a success, which had set my expectations up in entirely the wrong way.
Tin was a bit of a nasty shock. Perpetually, it seemed. It made all my senses incredibly—well, sensitive.
I could easily read in bed at night now, with no glasses and no illumination but what came through and around the closed curtains. Counting the boy across the classroom's eyelashes was nothing, if I didn't mind charting the progress of his emerging blackheads and hearing his adenoidal wheezing too.
The real downside to this was that any loud noise or bright light or strong smell was, to somewhat understate it, overwhelming.
A weak winter's dawn was blinding, and the mild chill burned my lungs and took great, hungry bites out of my bones with every heartbeat. My heart itself was distractingly loud. Even just the feeling of the seams and tags on clothes was unbearable after any sustained tin use.
Like with my other metals, there was some give in the amount I could burn at once, with a faster burn giving a stronger effect, but even at the lower end it was quite unpleasant.
I made the decision to keep practicing with it on my morning runs, and re-made that decision with every unexpected gunshot and backfiring car.
You could get used to almost anything, with enough time.

In. Breathe. Out.

Madison seemed to be having fun making a small project out of me, which I didn't begrudge her much. Making the rounds with her, I was touched to see how genuine most people were feeling inside, behind the awkward small talk I would have dismissed otherwise. It made it easier to accept their sympathy, with a grace that felt a little unnatural to me.
I knew I wasn't behaving completely normally, but I could also see that nobody was really expecting me to. I could see a lot of things, now. Maybe this would be an improvement?

In. Breathe. Out.

As disappointing as tin turned out to be, the lack of pretty much anything else on that front was worse.
After my parcels arrived—'girl stuff,' as far as Dad knew and was brave enough to pursue—I'd first confirmed that elemental metals worked the same as the supplements. I had a vague feeling there was some difference between them, but my power didn't seem to care.
I had slowly worked my way through all the safe ones, and a great deal of the less-safe ones too by now, whenever I really needed something to distract me. When silver did turn out to be a dud, I was almost disappointed. I was giving serious thought to just breaking into a science museum with a fork.

In. Breathe. Out.

People, or teenagers at least, were surprisingly simple. I almost wanted to take over Emma's old role in our friend group.
'Oh please, Dionne, of course he likes you. Just watch the way his hypothalamus acts whenever he looks your way, he's embarrassingly obvious. Now pull yourself together and go talk to the boy, or do I need to work your motor cortex for you?'
I laughed at myself. No. Taylor Hebert suddenly displaying social competence would probably get her sent straight to the Birdcage.

In—no. Couldn't swallow. Spasming too hard. Spit.
That was my sign I was done for a while.

I knew I was drawing this out more than I had to. I had a strong feeling about one metal that would work, though, and didn't think I was ready for what it would take to get it.
I'd just keep taking safe little nibbles out of the periodic table for the time being. There was no rush.

[Lurcher 1.14]

Seeing the loveglows in Dad's head always cheered me up. All I had to do was smile or reach out to touch him and he would brighten.
This wasn't even a power, really, I thought, or if it was, then it was one everyone was supposed to have. How much better would the world be?
"How's the running going?" he asked. "Caught anything yet?"
"Ha ha. It's going good, I think." The ironpulls were very natural-looking by this point. I was even comfortable enough to risk doing it along the Boardwalk, like I had originally almost-promised. "Relaxing. Maybe you should come some time. Futilely try to ward off the gray hairs a little longer."
He winced.
"I'm planning for my eyesight to get so bad I just can't see them. Getting there! And before you say anything else, you know full well that I need this gut to keep me from flying away on windy days." He looked at my plate. "Not hungry?"
"Sore throat. I'll get something later."

[Lurcher 1.15]

I knocked at the door like I was a stranger.

Emma and I had got our ears pierced together in early middle school. We'd put together a complicated scheme, probably based on some TV show she'd seen, where I tried to convince her dad mine had agreed and she tried to convince mine hers had.
The actual appointment and piercings themselves were all arranged by our mothers, who were never fooled by anything in their lives as far as either of us were aware.

"Taylor!" I was greeted. "You know just to come in, hon. Come along, let me feed you. You're looking so thin."
"Hi, Aunt Zoe," I said around her hug. "I already ate, thank you."
I cringed a little inside at the idea that she might be trying to—mother me? I wasn't certain about the patterns in her head and was scared I would accidentally do something that touched them off in the wrong way and hurt her.

I didn't have much jewelry of my own. All—or almost all—the things of any real quality were keepsakes of my mother, and I wasn't prepared to burn Mom's wedding ring for power quite yet.

"I was wondering if I could see her room, just for a little while?"

Emma, though, had something perfect.

[Lurcher 1.16]

Aunt Zoe was sitting in the kitchen, alone, thinking only sad thoughts. I put her aside, tried to forget where I was, and went to Emma's dresser. Nothing had been touched.

These earrings were a gift, from a relative Emma hadn't liked very much. The earrings might actually have been the cause of that—I couldn't remember right then. They were so expensive that she'd had to wear them any time they visited, or whenever they were attending the same event together.
She had even begged me to take them as a gift myself, I recalled fondly, rubbing my thumb over them, sure that it was the only way her parents would let her get rid of the ugly things. I'd heard so many rants about all the outfits they didn't go with, whatever that meant. Somewhere, she was probably glad she wasn't buried with them.

Feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the world, I filed off a piece of a golden spike from one, slowly worked up some spit, and swallowed it. A pool of power appeared inside me, like I knew it would.
I sat tailor-style on Emma's bed and burned.
Two figures, similarly seated, appeared opposite me.

[Interlude: Alan]

I didn't want to look anywhere right then, and ended up looking everywhere instead.

My eyes landed on Taylor.
She was shockingly pale and drawn, unsteady on her feet. Lifeless. The sole color to her came from the still-fresh scars framing one side of her face, standing out lividly.
It was strange to have to use my eyes to know she was there. Normally you'd hear her first and only have to look around for—my daughter. Not far, though.

Zoe was crying openly now. I pulled her closer, gently, and laid my hand on her stomach, rubbing my thumb across it to soothe her.
She gave out a harsh sob.
Oh. My hand stilled. I used to do that when she was pregnant with Anne, and then again with—
When had I last thought of that?

She and Taylor had spent two-thirds of their lives as each other's shadows, and I was certain that ratio would only have grown. Annette used to joke that the pair of them had forgotten how to walk with only two legs.
There was a lost look in her eyes as she stared down into the grave and an unfamiliar expression in the set of her mouth as her gaze moved around the crowd too.
You both wish it was her in that coffin, a spiteful little voice whispered in my ear.
I gave her my best attempt at a smile. She was a perceptive girl, sometimes. I hoped it wasn't obvious to her.

God, but I was all over the place today. This was supposed to be one of the grieving steps, wasn't it, the laying to rest?
I didn't think it was working. Could I stop this and try again another time?
My mouth opened, about to speak, but a lowing sound I didn't recognize came out instead.

I felt like if I broke down now, I wouldn't stop breaking down. I'd have no foundation left to build back up on, and I still had my responsibilities.
Danny and I had talked about this. He understood. I didn't even resent that his daughter was the one who had come back from the dead.
Zoe leaned farther into me.

Spoiler: Note

I did not promise a happy beginning!

Edited 10/22 to try to incorporate some helpful formatting advice from Sharpedge on SpaceBattles.

 

[therewolf]

Chapter 2: Augur

[Augur 2.1]

I gazed, fascinated, at the two girls in front of me.
The two—almost Taylors but not quite.

One was the me I kept being surprised not to see when I unexpectedly caught my own reflection in something. Her face was unscarred. I burned some tin and glanced over at Emma's dresser mirror, trying to ignore Aunt Zoe's crying. It was also—fuller. Happier. There was something slightly different about her eyes that I didn't think I could precisely express and hadn't noticed missing in mine until now.
The second girl was shocking in contrast. She was dressed in ratty clothes I didn't recognize. There was no life at all in her flat stare, just guarded wariness. She hunched herself in comically, so much she must surely have been in pain, an attempt to hide that only made her stand out more. It looked ridiculous next to her almost-twin.
Both of their gazes were tracking me, but with no sign of recognition. Curious and a little weirded out, I said, "Hello?" and waved my hand in front of them.
When they didn't respond, I reached across to the other side to poke the first girl's face.

All I could think was, an hour is far too long for lunch.
"—right, Tay?" Madison asked.
"Mm!" I agreed enthusiastically through a mouthful of food, not sure what to. I'd check I still had rights to my firstborn with Emma later. I looked over at her in conversation with one of the Heathers, and she looked up to give me a smile.
"That reminds me, actually," I lied brazenly after I swallowed. "What do you have planned for the WI homework? I saw a cool blog post on the Blasphemies last week, and you wouldn't believe some of the theories. It's a little sideways to the assignment, but—"

I flinched back into the pillows and screamed.
What the fuck was that? I thought, my heartbeat loud and irregular.

After I managed to take a breath to recover, I gingerly edged forward again and, before I could reconsider, made myself grab her hand.
Years' worth of a life I had so nearly but not exactly lived unspooled in my memory.

[Augur 2.2]

Emma was—fine. I was fine. I knew there'd been a big running battle between the E88 and the Protectorate near Emma's favorite mall a while ago, and was vaguely aware of some minor skirmishes since, but what did that have to do with me?
Huge, hot, heavy tears welled up in my eyes.
Was this real? I wanted to believe it was real. I wanted it to be real and this moment right now to be a bad dream someone else was having.

I'd thought I was healing, in my own head, carefully not put into words so I didn't have to admit it.
This sandpapered open every scab I had been jealously protecting, filled them with broken glass, squeezed them tight.
I couldn't think about this or I'd be sick again. I could feel it, or something, coming up.

I shuffled forward and collapsed myself on top of the second Taylor.
There was a harsh, stabbing pain all throughout my brain, and a galaxy of stars flamed to life in a void I had never realized existed.
They should have sent a poet, I thought dazedly.

[Augur 2.3]

This, I reflected, was how a power was supposed to be. There was no clumsy guesswork or grasping at hunches. Every detail of every insect in my—our—range was completely transparent to me, perfectly intuitive.
Moving them was as simple as—well, that was strange. I had perfect memories of using this, in my other life. I didn't have to travel far. They were right behind her shadow.
There was a disconnect, though, between my new/old instincts and this old/new ability. I could still feel everything in our—my—grasp, but trying to manipulate it did nothing.
If my bugs were normally an extension of my body, then this was something like—having a seizure?
Or like sleepwalking, maybe. That was closer. Like I was a passenger, only there to observe.

I lost myself in it for a time, familiarly. A thousand thousand minds, and my own just a speck among them.
Despite the lack of unifying control, there were beautiful glimpses of order in the chaos, patterns organically emerging through deeper processes I couldn't even begin to understand.
Birth and death and life, churning endlessly all around me. Everywhere underfoot, invisibly overhead, in every dark corner and every wall.
It was comforting, and humbling, and almost an honor to think that I might be the one person on earth, or on this earth, in a position to see this.
The weak, basic powers I'd secretly been getting so proud of were cast into harsh perspective, but so were a lot of other things.

"Are you okay in there, hon?" I heard through the door.
"Oh, yes!" I called back, a little hoarsely. Why was I crying? "Sorry for yelling!" I remembered to yell.

Regretfully, I saw my stolen gold was already nearly entirely gone, even burning it as slowly as possible.
Calmer now, I thought more on this other Taylor. I needed to tell them apart better. On Bug Taylor.
Taking her hand, I felt our awareness creep out across the neighborhood again.
This counted as another power, I supposed, kind of. Even if it did come with some unwelcome baggage, I thought, eyes flicking to Real Taylor.
I was amazed at the effortless facility she had with her abilities, and at all the different skills she'd picked up relating to it.
My mind traced its way over the research she'd done, the costume's false starts and design iterations, the breeding programs.
It was an incredible amount of work for one teen girl in a few short, what, months? How long had it been since—

[Augur 2.4]

I hugged Aunt Zoe tight. I really had missed her a lot.
"Would it be alright if I wore these for a while?"
She helped me put the earrings in. I wasn't sure if the old holes would have closed, but it turned out they were just barely there still.

We sat for hours and drank the tea I remembered so fondly and talked for what felt like the first time in years.
Trading stories about Mom with someone, with one of her best friends, was nice. Dad would probably claim he had dibs on being her very best friend, but that was only wishful thinking.
It did her good too, I think. She was looking much more put together when Uncle Alan eventually came home and I said my goodbyes.

She made me promise to come around for dinner with Dad sometime soon, which I easily agreed to.
"I will hold you both to that," Uncle Alan mock-threatened mock-sternly, a little drunk still. "I know Emma would have liked it."
Or maybe she wouldn't, I thought as I left their house, but really, what did I owe that bitch?

[Augur 2.5]

I was thankful it was the weekend. I needed time to get my thoughts in order.
That was a much bigger proposition than it had been yesterday.

'Stick-insect freak.' My feet thudding along the asphalt. 'I would kill for your legs, Taylor. Seriously, point me at your target!'
'Crack whore.' Pulling more and more lines in front of me, speeding up faster than I'd ever dared during daylight before. 'Are you ever even going to talk to a boy? Come on, Tay, you must like one—'
'Looking good, Taylor.' Releasing the lines, trying to maintain the pace with only my body. 'Looking good, Taylor.'

I weakly grabbed a swathe of lines behind and to the sides of me and trailed to a stop, falling to my hands and taking deep, gasping, uncontrolled breaths.
Bug Taylor had been enjoying running recently too. A jarring similarity with someone I didn't want to admit any similarity to.
I threw up discreetly at the side of the path and wiped my mouth on the inside of my t-shirt.

[Augur 2.6]

The rest of the elements I had left stashed did nothing.
Fine.

At the afternoon market I bought anything that looked like an interesting or unique flavor, or that had an ironline that appealed to me.
After filing off a few shavings of everything into water and gulping it down, I discovered three fresh powers to focus on.
All burning them seemed to do was give me a migraine and make me vomit. That was fine. I'd been planning to anyway.

Further testing found they were coming from:
— an antique coin some quick research determined should be steel, though it was pretty discolored
— another version of the coin made of bronze
— the frame of a small painting of a marsh that I was pretty sure was also bronze
— a shiny new brass spigot someone had breezily given me just for asking

None of them actually worked, but that was fine too. I had a hunch that they were correct alloys but not the right dosage of alloy, or however you expressed that.
I ordered a wide range of one, to start with, and expedited it. There was a calming amount of even common ones.

[Augur 2.7]

A life where everything was normal, and a life where everything was so deeply unnormal I could hardly recognize myself any more.
How far along that axis was my own? And what direction was I traveling?

I found aluminum when I expanded my search barely the tiniest bit. I felt like I almost knew why it'd never called to me. It was an extremely weird—metal?
It didn't show up as a metal line, at all. Looking at the roll of it in our kitchen drawer, which claimed to be 99% purity, was like looking at a stick of wood but moreso. Was I allowed to submit corrections to science?
Even regular ironlines disappeared if they were wrapped with the stuff, I discovered after an accident and a little experimentation. Like there was nothing there. Very strange, but not something I was likely to run into often. I might need to watch out for some kinds of cars, but those must not be common around here or I'd have noticed them by now.

I only crumpled a scrap up and ate it to be exhaustive, in the end, but I was surprised to see that it did register as a power.
The power to—remove all my other powers. Seriously. When I burned it, all my other pools vanished, and it sat there on its own, mockingly. Instead of not doing anything, this actively did nothing. After this long dry spell it felt like a taunt.
I didn't even know if it was physically removing the metals from my body or just my access to them, so I still had to get rid of the failed alloys myself to be safe and healthy. The headaches were getting easier to deal with, though.

[Augur 2.8]

The school had called Dad and asked where I'd been the last few days.
He confronted me about it, when I got home late that evening after my run, and I grumpily agreed to go back tomorrow.

I grabbed a hoodie from the bottom of my closet but slowly returned it. No. I wasn't the me who wore that.
Had to look normal. I'd put too much effort into that recently to lose it over something so minor.

Madison was waiting for me at the school gate.
When she zeroed in on me I flinched, and she seemed startled, not stopping me as I walked past.
I stopped myself, though, once I saw the lockers.

Emma shamelessly fluttering her eyelashes at a boy so she could swap with him and be neighbors with me. Giggling together just yesterday about the mirror and emergency hair-and-makeup kit she kept permanently installed in hers.

Sophia shoving me inside my own and holding me there as she forced the door closed. Squishing against and sinking into things I was desperately trying to avoid recognizing. The smell like I was flaring tin in an abattoir. Hearing the sounds of the morning crowd continue completely uninterrupted except for Emma's deliberately loud laugh.

[Augur 2.9]

When I came back to my, this, self, people were whispering. I burned my metals instinctively.
"—been doing so well! We thought she was getting better!" I heard a small hive of distressed lights say from across the room, almost crying.
"Yes, ma'am," from a bored voice. "It was right as she saw the Barnes' girl's locker."

I opened my eyes blearily to look.
Madison glared spitefully back at me from where she was talking on her mobile.
No. Madison looked at me concernedly, tears in her eyes. She'd obviously been crying already.
I felt dizzy.

"How are you feeling, Tay?" she asked, faux-sweetly, playing up to the still-watching nurse.
"I don't think I feel very well," I thought.
"Me neither," she said frankly, frowning.
What?
"Have you been sleeping with Empire recruiters again?"
I looked at her strangely. My brain was zapping as if I was chain-burning bad alloys.
"I must be giving them quite the firework show," I mused. I double-checked, though, and, yes, "I only ate the good metals today."
"Of course I've been sleeping," I lied slowly. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

[Augur 2.10]

I was on enforced bed rest. It was humiliating.
I was learning humility, I told myself. Soon I would be a lowly worm, and Bug Taylor could finish taking control of me.

I did make efforts of my own.
The tests stopped for now, mostly, to let me recover. The alloys were slow going anyway, and I seemed to be having trouble keeping track of which metals stashes I'd already used besides.
I set up timers and alarms on my phone to remember to have snacks and hydrate, which my body begrudgingly learned to accept. I hadn't been sure it would. It was more stubborn than me, sometimes.
Dad thought it was a good idea to keep getting some fresh air, but I limited my running to maybe only a few miles a day before turning back home.

Emma had tried to persuade me to go clothes shopping with her, but I'd managed to cleverly duck out of it. Moron.
I was slightly smug about my skillful maneuvering. I hated myself.
Maybe I should start on that new Maggie Holt book this afternoon, while she wasn't around to make fun of it. Maybe you should choke.
Hot pricks of envy stung at my eyes. Lying there on the bed, beside myselves with grief, I wished I could be burned away with just a little aluminum.
I gripped my hand through hers again, and ignored whoever was thinking those thoughts.

[Augur 2.11]

Dad was steeling himself to do something. I think I knew it before he did. I watched him calmly over the course of breakfast.
He was patterned with love, determination, and incandescent spots of fear and anticipation. All I had to do was wait for those to outshine his reluctance, which didn't take long once he put his mind to it, and—
"I was thinking it might be a good idea for us to see a therapist," he said mildly.
I considered it seriously for a second. Most of my problems came from powers, really. Could I trust a stranger with that? No. I was less and less certain I could trust myself.

And, wait, us? I felt a laugh building, inappropriately. I wasn't sure he knew what he was proposing. Bug Taylor's wouldn't be cheap.
Could Dad's medical insurance cover three separate therapists for three different Taylors, I wondered, my shoulders starting to shudder, or would it be more economical to arrange multiple appointments with the same one?
Dad's brainlights were spasming frantically somewhere above my head. I got myself under control.
"I'll think about it," I said, completely honestly, smiling and looking him in the eyes.
It didn't get the usual reaction.
"I'm tired, Dad," I said quietly, suddenly actually tired. "I'm going to skip my run and head to bed now, okay?"

Against my will, I set myself to thinking about Bug Taylor's relationship with (sigh) Bug Dad.
It was a mess, even if she couldn't admit it to me. To herself. I didn't want ours to fall apart that much, and I worried we were on the path to it.
Essentially, I thought, it was the same situation, just further along. I'd lost Emma, one way or the other, and the cleaving had exposed some natural, fragile flaw in me. I was slowly being undermined through a route I'd never had to guard before. Eventually there wouldn't be enough of me left to be there for him.

The main difference, I suddenly realized, was that I knew why I had lost my Emma. I knew the capes responsible, and I had spent entire nights watching and rewatching the excuses they'd made, reconstructing the events. It was senseless, but I could see the sense of it.
What was consuming me—both of me—was why her Emma had disappeared one day and came back a changeling, and what secrets the answer to that might turn out to hold about mine.
For that, I knew exactly what question to ask.

Who was Sophia Hess?

[Augur 2.12]

Dad was in the room with me and Principal Blackwell.

"Your father and I talked this through more extensively earlier this year," she was saying, "but we had, of course, hoped it would end up not being necessary."
It was weird to see her brain. She really didn't hate me. She just honestly didn't give much of a shit either way. I wished I could tell myself that.
"We thought a change of environment might be a good idea. We think," Dad corrected himself. "There are a lot of memories here you're—struggling with, obviously."
Obviously, I thought.
"Your teachers are all happy to speak for you, and your coursework speaks for itself."
They were talking about moving me to Arcadia.
"The introductory tests will barely be a formality," she briefly paused her litany of complete disinterest. "With a little rest, I'm sure. They're always looking for bright students."
Immaculata was also an option if I did flunk testing in. Uncle Alan had offered to help cover the fees, apparently, and they at least weren't too picky.

It was impressive how quickly things seemed to be taking place. I'd scarcely mentioned the thought to Dad and the process began happening almost the next day.
Maybe my reaction the other time I'd tried to make myself go back helped, but I had the vague idea he and Uncle Alan were pulling strings on my behalf as well.
Could Bug Taylor's problems be solved so easily if she would only communicate with the people in her life? It was something to keep in mind in future, for anything else that was safe to talk about.
I moved to speak, and had to swallow a couple of times first. My mouth had been very dry lately.

"Do you know if Sophia Hess still goes there?"
I knew she didn't go to my Winslow. I couldn't quite bring myself to go back to being Bug Taylor, either, but I'd thoroughly searched two other sets of almost-matching memories for a hint of her and found nothing.
On hearing the name, though, Blackwell's skull started sparking all over.
"Who's that?"
I raised my head and focused my eyes on the woman at this.
"A friend of Emma's from middle school," I lied casually. "I thought I heard she went there, but maybe I'm misremembering?"
I gave a sharp tug to the newly-glowing parts of her, not sure what it would do to a person.
"I'm not familiar with the girl," she said, but her emotions said otherwise. "And I really can't discuss other students. But perhaps you'll run into one another."

[Augur 2.13]

My placement tests went fine in the end. For all that the place got hyped up, they still taught mostly-regular teenagers. There was a limit to how much of a shit you could expect them to give about schoolwork, and I guessed it wasn't such a hard shit to match.

I did some primitive divination the morning I actually started at Arcadia.
First I spread out all my remaining samples, carefully attached to the cards identifying the mix ratios.
Then I closed my eyes, flared my ironlines, and for good measure flexed my tin and lightly ran my fingers across them, trying to pick the one that felt 'friendliest.'
I didn't think there was really any difference, but, as it happened, the mix I picked turned out to be functional. My first alloyed metal.
Maybe it would end up not being exactly perfect, but I took this as the positive omen I wanted it to be, put off experimenting until later, and resolved to leave that bad habit behind me for a while—along with a couple of others.
For now, six solid-ish powers resting comfortably within me (I'm pretty much two Eidolons, I thought dully), I could let myself live in my self, physically and temporally.

That settled so anticlimactically, and my mood firmly buoyed, I put in an effort to talk about nothing important with Dad as he drove me there.
I'd had to promise to get the bus here and back in future, which was going be an exercise in patience after the freedom of running everywhere all day, but he'd insisted on dropping me off himself at this fresh start.
The drive into the Faraday cage was interesting, like traveling inside and through a loosely-stitched out-turned sock of blue light, until the lines attenuated enough to fade from my perception.
He made sure to remind me to re-enable cell service, once I was on my way home again and could re-connect. The introductory pamphlet had warned that most phones' batteries drained very quickly if it was just left on.

It honestly was a lot easier that it was all new. None of my lives had ever even visited here before, and I couldn't think of any reason they ever would.
Original memories, novel experiences, tying me to myself. This might actually work.
I told Dad so, in slightly different words, to calm down his roiling emotions, and gave a small, soothing pull on the embers of his hopes when I hugged him goodbye.

[Augur 2.14]

I couldn't quite face the dining hall yet, so I wended my way about the rest of the school instead, enjoying the feeling of only being lost physically, ignoring the unwelcome echoes from someone else's thoughts.
There were metal mechanisms hidden in the edges of all the windows, I observed, presumably part of some kind of emergency shutters.
A stark absence of gang tags, even in the most disreputable areas of the building I could find.
I nearly interrupted other students a couple of times, staying out of the main press like me for whatever reason, but I saw their headlights flashing well before mine ever registered to them and detoured myself smoothly around, unnoticed.

My sightseeing led me to the student mural of the (supposed, but it was no real secret) attending Wards, which occupied maybe half the wall outside the art studio. It must have been a long-running project, because Triumph and even Battery still stood waiting to meet my eyes threateningly.
Also staring back at me were Aegis, Kid Win, Silhouette, Gallant, and Clockblocker (possibly the one person in the city more lame than me, even Emma—used to be able to admit).
Almost all, I noted with amusement, had full-face helmets or were obscured by shadow. If I could scratch the paint off just a little, would I see the blush there from knowing they had to pass themselves every day?

[Augur 2.15]

Lunch, packed by Dad, was eventually eaten on the roof, as I gazed out over the nicer side of town.
He'd put together a spinach salad ('rich in iron :]' he'd written on the tub—I laughed, picturing myself dressed up as Popeye for a commercial) and included some of Emma's favorite cookies that we'd kept an emergency stock of at our house for as long as I could remember in every life I had ever lived.

I used my tin to ground myself and wash away the still slightly bitter aftertaste of those recollections, and left it on strong while I enjoyed everything in the bag.
If I concentrated, I thought I could also taste the love and affection, and I imagined burning that too, and letting it empower some part of me only I could have seen.

[Augur 2.16]

After everyone else had escaped the bus and I was the last passenger, making my way farther towards the Docks than any of my peers, I opened myself up to burning bronze.
Again, it was an odd one that didn't seem immediately useful, which I had almost come to expect by this point.
From everywhere around, for what felt like a vast distance to a sense I'd just now discovered, I heard strange, discordant noises.
With a little focus, and flaring it as hard as I could, I could find regular patterns in some of it.

I sat there, alone, listening to music only I might ever hear.
It was like an orchestra where nine-tenths of the instruments and another nine-tenths of the musicians were misplaced, or phasing in and out of existence. The conductor was missing or mad or both.
It reminded me of the night when I had been Bug Taylor and felt on the cusp of great understandings about—something.
I listened to it all the way home, and ordered more.

[Interlude: Lisa]

I hopped onto the bus, smiled at the driver, and made my way to the back.
The only other passenger was a girl sitting slumped, maybe three-quarters of the way to the end, close to my usual seat, which I claimed.
would have sat in back for preference
rear seats occupied when boarding
Amazing stuff, power. I worked on extricating my phone from my bag.
She was beating out an irregular tattoo on her seat's handle. Very amateur drummer? Very gifted drummer, suffering from terrible motor skills after unfortunate smelting accident?
engrossed in listening to experimental music
Jesus, what a nerd.
no earbud in ear closest to you
careful to maintain situational awareness
Well that was just common sense. Marquis might have made the trains run on time and kept the blood stains off the bus routes, but this was still the Bay. You never knew what danger you'd stumble into.

No new threads on the Brockton PHO subforum. No stickied or unusually active threads in general.
A spate of updates to the discussion thread for Bitch, irritatingly. Had she beaten up another labradoodle owner? I clicked my tongue, clicked the link, and waited for it to load, actively flexing my power to consider how to deal with whatever this situation was.
I realized the tapping had tapered off.

A quick glance up showed drummer girl staring me straight in the soul through the dark of the window, wild-eyed. What in the Green Christ?
music unexpectedly disrupted
Wait, I could see her other ear now that she'd sat up. There was—
no earbud in either ear
Then—
not listening to music
Yes, thank you so fucking much.
time of disruption same as your power use
Ah.
cause of disruption was your power use
Well, shit.
girl can detect capes
Fuck.
at great range
I was trapped in a metal coffin with a Trump.
girl has detected y—

A fucking power nullifier Trump, too, of all the fucking luck, and it seems like we'd accidentally outed ourselves to each other.
Was this bitch a cape assassin? Her powers seemed made for it. I couldn't tell whether she had any weapons or what her intentions were, but from the look in her eyes I thought she might jump over and start chewing off my face if I said the wrong thing here.
I slowly moved to raise my hands. She flinched. I stopped.
A fucking jumpy power nullifier Trump, who looked extremely unwell and more than a little unhinged now that I was belatedly paying attention to her myself instead of relying on whatever information my power decided to kill and drop at my feet.
'Calm down, miss, this is all a misunderstanding. Truce rules?' was what I tried to say, but she just up and ran to the front of the bus as soon as I started the first word.
I stayed very still and attempted to communicate with my eyes that I wasn't a threat to anyone. She kept her eyes on me, twitchily, and if I came across anything like her then I was failing miserably.
Almost against my will, hoping I wasn't being too obvious, I made some mental notes for later.

— relatively tall and gaunt for a girl
— moderate scarring partially covering one side of face, somewhat recent
— decent quality clothes, not incredibly expensive but cared for like they were
— truly awful earrings—possibly a gag gift, worn ironically? did not go with her outfit at all
— puffy cheeks not accounted for in makeup style
— heavy eye bags inexpertly concealed

We pulled over between stops, what felt like a couple of hours later, and she hopped out almost before it came to a halt, throwing back a thank you to the driver in a tight, panicked voice, then walked quickly away.

— unconcerned about debarking at an unmarked location
— familiar with the area in general, not reliant on a specific bus route

As soon as she was safely turned away, I took a quick picture of her in the glow of a street light then sat there and tried to get my heart under control.
I got off myself at the next stop and cut immediately across a park before power walking in the opposite direction of its destination. Capehunter had exclusive dibs on wherever the fuck she was headed, as far as I was concerned.
Starting to circle back to the loft, I almost cried with relief when my power told me a crosswalk signal had fecal matter smeared on the button. I ignored it. Those things were placebo anyway.

power was not nullified
Huh.
power was not nullified
girl was not valid target
blind spot, it added helpfully, like it thought I was a moron.
Well—okay. I suppose I was a little more focused on the threat to my life than the thread count of the seats. Your pedantry is noted and unappreciated.
I brought up the picture of her on my phone and recalled her mean-mugging me from the front of the bus.
girl is not valid target
Still? What the fuck was her range? Why was she ever one?
—
Ugh.

Rachel stomped her way inside the loft, trailed by Judas and a limping Anjelica, trying to ingrain mud into the carpet like she was imagining it was my face.
How could anyone resist joining this team? I wondered. She'd been different since we lost Brutus to Lung. Angrier, impressively.
She still felt most emotions, I knew that much, even if she expressed them through inconsistent and frequently imparsable grunts and violence. I tried to be supportive, not that she appreciated it. She was just—
grieving
Yes. Oh. But that fit, didn't it?
I pictured bus cape again, going over my thoughts from earlier.

A local girl, grieving for her recently lost—sister? No. The clothes and jewelry were cherished gifts, but across disparate income levels. Close friend or girlfriend, or maybe a cousin or half-sister.
Definitely a girl, though. Likely similar in age. She styled herself on the girl, or only styled herself at her request and following her instructions. Her makeup hadn't been updated for recent changes in appearance because she didn't really know how to.
Isolated, at a guess. The lost girl was her closest or only friend? She clearly wasn't talking to any other girls who felt comfortable enough to tell her she currently looked like roadkill. In fairness, that I could hardly blame them for.

Looking at it from an alternate, slightly more calm angle, it was as if she had no idea how to interact with another cape. A recent trigger?
She lost someone to capes and triggered as a Trump. Was presumably present herself, given what I vaguely remembered about the trigger criteria for that kind of powerset, and that would fit with her injuries.
She wasn't doing whatever it was to block my power until now, and, I checked, that hadn't dropped yet. It's possible this was literally the first time she discovered she even could do it.
So a very recent trigger. Possibly her first encounter with a cape since it happened?

Counter-cape Trumps were often extremely hostile to any other capes they identified.
Notable examples, I recalled again, light-headedly, included Hatchet Face of the Slaughterhouse Nine and Glaistig Uaine of every cape's fucking nightmares.
I felt sweat begin to bead up on my palms.

Well.
It was a start for searching. Exceedingly discreet searching. Information never hurt anyone.
If nothing else, I'd rest easier knowing how to avoid her in future, if we were sharing a suddenly-too-small-seeming city.

I had to tell the others, obviously. I imagined it.

"Did you talk to her?" Alec asks.
"No."
"Lisa," he says sternly.
trying to set up a bad joke
I roll my eyes.
"Maybe half a word."
He hangs his head in his hands.
"We're doomed," he pronounces.
Rachel makes her agreeing face.
"Lisa, we haven't done anything to upset anybody like that," Brian reasons reasonably. "She was definitely white, right?"

I sighed. I'd tell them sometime. I deserved a night off from the circus.

Spoiler: Note

That bronze coin is meant to be a 1943 Lincoln Wheat Penny, a misstamping of the steel one I was looking for originally, which is apparently worth millions of dollars. I like the idea of her just gnawing on the thing.

I'm not sure if some of the medical stuff in the last chapter came through properly, but after her trigger Taylor had a brain injury followed by some post-traumatic amnesia (issues creating new memories). She also started work on developing an eating disorder based around and on her power, which you've seen more of here.
I only realized afterwards that maybe not everyone is familiar enough with this kind of thing to pick up hints towards it, which is totally my bad. A different interlude that explained some of this stuff would maybe be more useful, depending on what wasn't clear.
This does turn around a little eventually, honest. I'm regretting how front-loaded all the miserable stuff is now that I'm editing and rereading it from a different perspective.

 

[therewolf]

Chapter 3: Seeker

[Seeker 3.1]

Sophia Hess turned out to be surprisingly difficult to pin down.
The more surprisingly because she actually seemed to be interested in me, too.

[Seeker 3.2]

Idly, at lunch—it was Sloppy Joesday—I was playing with copper and chromium, burning and flaring and tamping them on and off, trying again to detect any effect. I'd long since given up on worrying about anything spectacular happening. I should be so lucky.
With a start, I realized chromium was showing me something for once. It was hard to notice behind zinc's glows, which I quickly shut off (a welcome relief from the furnace that was the New Wave table), but some of the people here had extra lights in their brains.
A boy I recognized from my math class. Two boys sitting together across the hall.
I looked around.
Amy Dallon. Panacea. Victoria Dallon. Glory Girl.
An oddly knotted set in another person seated beside them, who was turning to look at me.
The fear in me sank from head to heart to finally wash coolly through my intestines.
Was I unmasking Wards? I had seen what those capes did to anyone acting against their own.
I extinguished every metal inside me in a sudden twitch, for the first time regretting I didn't carry aluminum, and the world dimmed like I'd just blown the building's main fuse.
Nobody else reacted.
I stayed very still until the bell rang, and disguised myself in the leaving crowd.
From then on, I was careful to only use the metals I knew to be safe at school.

[Seeker 3.3]

I watched several sessions of her training alongside the track team.
She was good, I supposed, for someone so limited by gravity.
They all exchanged friendly twinkles while slapping backs afterwards, but hers were a slightly strange shade.

[Seeker 3.4]

I took to riding the bus after school most afternoons, until the service was about to stop, listening to the almost-melodies of bronze as it looped back and around the route a few times, stargazing with tin when it got dark enough, before ironrunning homewards.
Home seemed less welcoming these days.
Dad's brainlines had started consistently settling into a different pattern whenever he saw me, and, if I plucked them, his expression changed to one I recognized from Bug Taylor's gradually fading memories.
I didn't want to have brought that to this world, too.

[Seeker 3.5]

We didn't share any classes—she was on the accelerated half-day track, which my grades didn't quite qualify me for—but I kept thorough notes of the patterns I observed in her absences anyway.

[Seeker 3.6]

School itself was mostly going well, I thought.
I'd never had a great deal of trouble with schoolwork, before—everything. That I could confidently put down to Mom's having had strict standards for my education at home. I'd felt it would be sad to let that lapse just because she wasn't around to look disappointedly at me in person any longer, so I'd deliberately developed a good-enough impersonation of it in my mind instead, at least for the important subjects.
The expectations at Arcadia were higher than I was used to from Winslow, but so was the quality of the teaching, which more or less made up for it. They knew how to challenge me to the point that I couldn't spend too much time thinking about real life, and that was extremely appreciated.

[Seeker 3.7]

I caught her eye in the halls, once in a while, and only had to look up a little to see her frustrated restraint, well-hidden worry that I was onto her, and sometimes even an unexpected blush of searing shame.
I stared back at it, amused at how easy and familiar this dance still was despite one partner not knowing there was any music playing.

[Seeker 3.8]

On the bus one evening I got something of a shock. I was just sitting there normally when suddenly a noise like a jet engine began thrumming right in my ear.
I glanced surreptitiously at the only other person on board, through her reflection in the window by my side, and felt her lights begin to function frenetically behind me.
She had a power, I realized, burning chromium at a sudden hunch, and that was almost blindingly bright too.
What could I do? What could it be doing to me?
Terrified, I attempted to reach out and pull on one for the first time. Nothing seemed to happen.
At a loss for anything else, I flared all my metals, full strength, and the hostile power reluctantly died down to a soft glow.
Turned off tin, with a wince, and its light stayed depressed and muted. Turned off copper for a moment, and it started to work more actively again. Very hastily turned that back on.
I slowly pulled myself to the front of the bus, keeping an eye on the cape to be certain it didn't follow, and asked the driver to let me off where we were.
I'd had my suspicions, but I guessed I knew for sure now what my bronzesounds were coming from.
I made my way home by a different route after that.

[Seeker 3.9]

I had yet to find her eating anywhere on the school premises.
Where was she disappearing to, and how?

[Seeker 3.10]

Occasionally, usually on my way to the cafeteria if I was going there that day, a bonfire would approach and start crackling something imperiously at me.
Turning off my zinc revealed this to only be Glory Girl, but I still felt phantom waves of heat emanating from her, and hurriedly walked away before she managed to set me on fire, too.
I couldn't think what she might want.
Was she mistaking me for someone else?

[Seeker 3.11]

I laughed loudly when I saw her arguing furiously with a man in the parking lot one morning as I passed, sparks almost spitting out of her at him.
Didn't she know how ridiculous she looked?

[Seeker 3.12]

I cried when I noticed how my hair was suffering.
Dad came home to find me like that, and held me as I blubbered incoherently, seeming to get some comfort from at least performing the actions of soothing me.
Or from my being open enough not to hide this from him too. I couldn't spare the attention to try to parse exactly what he was thinking in the moment.
None of the rest of me had managed to ruin this, I couldn't help observing. It was an experience wholly unique to me, another constant in my lives I hadn't been able to appreciate properly until it was gone.
Was this a good thing, then?

[Seeker 3.13]

Eventually she sought me out alone in a corridor between classes.
"What do you want?" she demanded, cool lights stepping inside my guard, hot concern that she would be caught dancing around inside them.
We were almost exactly the same height, I realized, standing straight.
"Can I help?" she added mockingly.
I tilted my head at her.

[Seeker 3.14]

"Sophia!" a voice barked, like it was only just stopping itself from saying 'Heel!'
She turned aside, thoughts flashing with an irritation/expectation/resentment grouping I sometimes saw in classmates who'd been discovered playing phone games mid-lecture.
I recognized it coming. It was the most familiar thing I'd seen in a while, actually, but I didn't bother even avoiding the shoulder check. Leaned into it more, if anything.
When my crown cracked against a wooden doorframe I hadn't sensed was behind me, though, a flinch set my chromium burning alongside the flash of tin to re-orient myself.
Looking disbelievingly at her as she stalked away, I traced out the strings of silver spreading themselves throughout her skull.

Sophia Hess was a cape.

[Seeker 3.15]

I had been good, I thought. When was the last time I'd burned? I had been getting better, with everything.
This was Sophia's fault, really, like who knew what else. What had she done to—?
All I needed was a slight pull back to center, to where I was supposed to be, to where I was in control.
I had done all the work for it, hadn't I? I reasoned calmly. I wouldn't use much, and I would be quick.

[Seeker 3.16]

Kneeling in the unlit and unfamiliar supply closet, mildly flickering tin illuminating it nicely and steadying my hands, I pulled out Emma's earring and eagerly used iron to grab the file from my inside backpack pocket.

Burning, my two conspirators joined me, and I jumped with surprise.
I briefly noted Real Taylor seeming as smugly happy as she should, but all my attention was swiftly seized by Bug Taylor.
What had I been doing?

She was wearing her cape outfit, and I had no idea what could have prompted the change. Both of me had always just been dressed in day clothes before, no matter what hour we'd burned.
The costume was at least mostly finished, though it had turned out a little—differently than I'd anticipated. It actually looked somewhat threatening from this perspective.
It was also, I thought, inspecting it with strangely possessive disapproval, looking very beat up.
There were char and scorch marks all over, sweat stains snaking their way down the silk from her armpits, and some cracked plastic in one of the mask's new yellow lenses.
I certainly hadn't left it like that when I last checked in on her.

I hesitated for a moment, glancing between myselves.
An untroubled gaze and a pair of large, insectoid eyes, both sets seeking mine.

[Interlude: Lisa]

Taylor Hebert.

Tracing her story was very nearly a fun little game, since my power still mostly refused to co-operate and I'd had to do the majority of it myself.

A recent transfer to Arcadia, but not, I thought, looking through some after-action reports and wincing, a likely candidate for the Protectorate track.
They didn't have anyone like that on their current or upcoming Wards roster, anyway, to as high a clearance as I could easily get access to.
Vegas would love her, though, I was sure.

Her trigger was simple enough to work out, when you started with the end results and worked backwards.
Longer ago than I'd imagined, and that threw me off for a spell, but even in this shithole that kind of thing was hardly commonplace, and her medical records from the period were certainly illuminating.
Now-recovered(?) anterograde amnesia following head trauma sustained during a cape fight, which was presumably the occasion or at least causation of her trigger.
The trigger itself might have happened in the hospital, later, where it was apparently possible she'd been continuously forgetting then reliving the immediate aftermath of the entire event, like some manner of fucked-up Grey Boy loop caused purely by the merciless miracle of the human body.
I was honestly a little surprised the G-Men hadn't leaned on Panacea to, at the bare minimum, drop in and fix up her face, considering the news coverage it all got at the time. Although, given said timing, maybe they had better causes to cash those kinds of favors in for.
And, well, not to be a complete bitch, but she wasn't exactly the photogenic one of the pair. Or wasn't beforehand. In a lot of the reporting she was virtually an afterthought.

The quick collapse and slow recovery immediately afterwards? Also completely understandable. Few capes would make fun of another for having difficulties dealing with their trigger event. The vast majority always did. Even the most successful of us were usually driven to it constantly from behind, as it were.
The next sudden harsh nosedive in function, however, of a girl with a strong support network, well-loved at home and anywhere else I could track any trace of her, who seemingly had actually been solidly recovering, was—less explicable.
The trajectory almost made me think of a second trigger, but I couldn't find an instant in her recorded life when it might have occurred. Not that I'd ever wish that on anyone.

I kept expecting the boss to ask about her. That was the other shoe that had been hovering above my head for what felt like an inexplicably long interval now.
He sometimes questioned me differently in different timelines, I knew that. Early on, he'd delighted in letting me know he knew secrets I'd never spoken.
Had we already had the conversation I was waiting to have? Or did she screw with his power in some way too?
Doubtful. Coil was still operating mostly normally, and she was breathing much more regularly than his problems were typically capable of.
I just hoped he didn't intend to recruit her, if she ever began appearing on the scene publicly. Or maybe I should be hoping he would, but keep her far, far away from us?

A confidential source at her new school characterized her as a danger to herself.
Frequently caught in maladaptive daydreaming and sudden fits of paranoia.
High risk of a relapse into self-harm and disordered eating patterns, described previously in her records as responsible for her exceptionally expedited transfer to Arcadia.
Low to moderate risk of suicide.
Minor risk as suicide vector, at least among the students.
Keep well distanced from any agitating influences—whatever the reason.
Counselling strongly recommendeaned, but only approach through the larger family unit and absolutely don't be pushy.
The faculty seemed to be treating this as gospel, and it was perfectly plausible, except I was practically certain no one there was close enough to her to speak so authoritatively regarding her inner life like that.
It all rubbed me much the wrong way, I could admit to myself.

Two knocks echoed sharply around the loft.
"Tats will get it!" Alec called to me.

I looked at the feed from the front door camera.
Taylor Hebert was standing there, unmasked, flushed.
"L limerence," she said clearly, looking directly into the concealed lens.

Spoiler: Note

In Which One Lonely Bus Loses Its Two Favorite Passengers Forever

Very small chapter, sorry. There is a reason for that, but in practice this is just a bridge to let the characters catch up to what the readers already mostly know.
The next one's much longer and a little more eventful to make up for it. It's also kind of finicky, though, and I'm growing less and less happy with it.

 

[therewolf]

Chapter 4: Smoker

Spoiler: Timeline Position

Taylor's 'Skitter' memories in this chapter are last updated right at the start of Tangle 6.9.
Worm Chapter Synopses, for reference.

[Smoker 4.1]

This was a second chance at a first impression, I realized as I was pulling myself maddeningly slowly across the city towards the loft. With people who could understand, people who could help, people I cared for—however that might have happened.
There were—a lot of things to reject about being Bug Taylor, but her friends were maybe the one thing worth salvaging from the developing wreck of her life.
I was still stubbornly clinging to some ill-conceived and growingly-unjustifiable ideas of betrayal, over there, but here I could make the choice to be as true a friend to them as I knew they would be to me.
Had anyone else ever had an opportunity like this?

I tried to release the visualization I still held of 'Taylor' as a cracked gem, slowly rotting from the inside.
Instead, I decided, I would be an alloy of myself.
All the best parts of myselves, carefully selected, impurities discarded, turned into one stronger, better, more stable me.
And who could tell what I would do when I burned?

Chromium let me observe Lisa's power flickering wildly back and forth. She was getting more and more agitated as she watched my eyes tracking across her forehead.
Taking control of myself, I stopped and tried to keep eye contact. I had fallen a little out of practice at that lately, in a couple of lives, and it would be a good thing to relearn.

"So," I began when nobody else seemed willing to say anything. "You're probably wondering who I am."
"Could you turn off your power, please?" Lisa asked instead, very politely and confusingly.
I was surprised to see she was as worried about messing this up as I was.
"Uh, sorry, what power? Which power, I mean," I confidently corrected my grammar.
She gleamed with dismay.
"Whichever one is blocking mine, maybe, for a start."
Oh, copper? I was pretty sure.
"Sorry, instinct," I explained, stopping its reassuring burn.
"Thank you," she said, beginning to tinge green.
I looked around the room at everyone.

Alec's head was fascinating.
Almost any time an emotion started sparking, it was ruthlessly tamped down to almost nothing, almost immediately, almost before I could even register it. I wasn't sure he could himself. All his brain—his power?—allowed him were some muted flickers of amusement. It was like watching damp fireworks somehow still explode underground.
He noticed me looking.
"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Brian was fear, confusion, calculation, and something I almost thought I recognized as duper's delight, all ably hidden from anyone but me and maybe Lisa.
I gave him a smile, which didn't seem to help.

Rachel—looked more like her dogs than like any other human I'd seen. Her power took up a surprising amount of the extra gaps and space, as if it were a trellis supporting the simpler webs.
I supposed that fit with what Lisa had told me about her power-inflicted issues, but it was disquieting to see it laid bare in such a manner.

The worst parts of myself stared unseeingly back at me, emotions a mystery, ignoring the friends she was currently betraying. A week before she turned them into the Protectorate, she'd promised herself. A week that was now up.
She had been composing her confession, when I'd said my goodbyes and started preparing to say my hellos. This might be the closest she would ever get to them again, and, maybe, the closest I would ever again get to her.
Despite everything she'd done, despite everything she didn't realize she'd become, my heart ached for the girl who could have been me, if things had gone just a little differently.
She didn't have much left. I wasn't sure how either of us would deal with her losing this too.

"I—don't understand."
Saying that actually seemed to cause Lisa physical pain. I considered it.
"The way you explained your power to me—you're probably getting some odd outputs?"
She ran her tongue over her teeth.
"You—know me. No, you know us."
Her thoughts turned a whiter shade of pale.
"You're one of us. And have been for a while. And you're excited to meet everyone for the first time," she said, then paused. "Again."
That was surprisingly accurate, I thought. Her power really was bullshit. I nodded.
"I'm your closest friend in years-months-minutes, your closest since you lost—uh, the girl you grew up with. Who you—" her eyes flicked uncertainty across my face, "—hate?"
Near enough, I motioned, and heard her heartbeat speed up.
"You can read our minds."
"As much as you can, maybe, or a little less?" I offered alongside a hesitant half-smile, unsure what exactly she was thinking now to set the base of her skull all aglow with dread.
"You're a hero?"
Alec's face looked alarmed.
"Or not a villain. Or—uh. Uh. You—want to help people?"
Within reason, naturally.
"But you've weighed your options and believe you'd do better working with us."
Skeptical relief.
"I need to know," I said, grabbing hard onto the line that had pulled me here. "What do you know about Bakuda?"

My question took some explanation. Explaining the explanation took some more. I kept myself composed during what felt like a debrief.

"Is the other me as hot?" Alec inquired.
Lisa glared at him.
"And is the other Tattletale as annoying?"
I smiled at him.
"She's nice. You were all pretty nice, but then you were trying to recruit me. In that world I have a strong power."
"Well, sounds like you survived Rachel's recruitment test," he said, looking me over. "Were you a Brute?"

They didn't need to know everything, of course.
Brian did not need to learn that I'd been calling my other self Bug Taylor, for example, I decided. Or that Bug Taylor somehow ended up actually calling herself Bug, which felt like Lisa's power trolling me across universes. I made sure to refer to her only as 'Skitter,' and resolved to start internalizing the silly name so I wouldn't mess up in future. I also didn't mention that it wasn't my first, or for that matter my own, choice.

Rachel was a beacon of keening sorrow, howlingly intense, when I mentioned Brutus playfully trying to gnaw my hand off when I first met her for the first time.
I looked sadly at the collar she was wearing. She hadn't spoken yet, but she was maybe being the most open person here.

There were some peculiar irregularities in the place itself I couldn't account for.
The single large couch was completely different, a clean white that I thought was a strikingly poor piece of forward planning considering Alec's habits, and looked wrong to me in the living space.
My own room, as new to me as it still was, was a loss I'd anticipated. Even knowing that it was slightly illogical, I felt a deep, twanging burn of—something, when I saw it inconsiderately filled with stuff.

"This insect power does sound useful," Brian smoldered consideringly. "Have you experimented much, trying to get it to work properly here?"
"It's, uh, difficult to use. I—had some issues, after I first tried it. It's very expensive, too," I realized, happily for once.

I explained my plan.
Locating Bakuda would probably be pretty easy and quick if she was in or around the city, I said, making a negative space cross pattern stand out behind Lisa's temple.
All I needed was to be told if that was even necessary. There were, after all, a few rather major discrepancies between our worlds.
Mostly the results of my own actions, as far as I know, I thought to myself, still not having quite reconciled the fear and guilt stoked by that conclusion.
There was no public news on this side about mass bombings, or civilians being forcibly implanted with explosives. I had checked.
It was stretching my rules, and I didn't like it, but surely just anonymously tipping off the Protectorate would be safe? They were supposed to have caught her by now anyway. I was sure Lisa could find some way they wouldn't be able to track us.
The idea of standing by, watching while innocent people had their lives, lives I already felt so responsible for, ended or devastated by a cape, was, was—
I was rambling, I realized. I couldn't fit what I was feeling into words, and it stayed trapped inside, burning me. My voice trailed away.
Lisa was lit up by a dawnburst of understanding, for whatever reason. Something from her power, presumably.
Instead of answering my questions, however, she sat silently. Flames of greed-shame-grief slowly took root in her, warring with doubt-hope-disbelief against anxiety, humanity, and a basic, somewhat shaky underpinning of empathy and sympathy.
People feeling a whole host of conflicting and contradictory emotions at once was nothing new to me by now, but the intensity of hers was wonderful. Bug Taylor had had no idea Lisa carried passions like this hidden within her.
In fact, I was so distracted that I missed her question, when she eventually managed to ask it, just barely catching the tail end.
"Uh, pardon?"
Only internally looking a little put out at her dramatic moment being ruined, she repeated herself, tossing an entirely new metal into the mix.
"What do you know about Coil?"

[Smoker 4.2: Grue]

"To start with, I think, we need to know your cape name."
"Skitter?" she asked hesitantly.
"No, your cape name. With your powers. What have you been calling yourself?"
The cape, Taylor?, blushed at that for some reason.
"I haven't been, I guess."
Bitch grunted.
"Don't let the heroes pick it."
She peered around at us owlishly, comically wide-eyed.
"I don't want to be a cape. No offense." She blinked, maybe her first of the evening. "I—well, I have powers, yes, but I don't want to actually wear a cape and do cape things. Does it matter?"
"You are a cape," I said, not letting my frustration show.
"Even the Indians use cape names," Alec threw in knowledgeably.

Another tack.
"You haven't picked a costume either yet, then? You'll want something to hide your identity if you're publicly working with us, right?"
"I—could do that, I guess. If we're—making up a story for me?"
That idea seemed easier to accept, for whatever reason. She requested a pen and a pad of paper, which Bitch surprisingly fetched from her things for her.
"Feels weird," she mumbled. At my look, she added, "I don't actually have the muscle memory of being able to draw like this."

I kept an eye on her as she put together a sandwich. Was this a power play, showing how familiar she was with our kitchenette?
"Did you hear her say she carved out fucking Lung's eyes?" Alec said interestedly. He leaned over and mimed something maybe-racist. "Real Naruto shit."

"Your power," Tats said. "The—power-blocking one?"
"Oh, did you want it turned back off again?" the girl asked helpfully. "It honestl—"
"No, no! No. I just need to know, exactly how much testing have you done with it?"

Almost none, really, it turned out. With any of her many, multiple, strong powers.
I couldn't tell if it was maddening she was ignoring so much potential, or impressive she wasn't stir-crazy with it like most capes would've been. Maybe you could substitute crazy-crazy for that in a pinch, I thought, watching the way her eyes flickered around the room at things only she could see, whenever she wasn't maintaining unblinking eye contact, awkward pose held inhumanly still.
What had we gotten us into?

"Pica?" from Alec.
Tats hmmed.
"Actually—pica pica is the magpie, that'd fit, I guess. What do you think? Magpie?"
She still seemed weirdly reluctant to pick one.

I thought I was getting a good enough read of her to feel safe interrupting one of her stories about someone called Bug Emma with a question.
"Who is Shadow Stalker?"
She frowned and seemed to be searching for an answer. She frowned deeper before suddenly blurting out into a harsh laugh.
"She's Sophia!"
"Who is Sophia?" I asked patiently after maybe thirty seconds, when she didn't clarify.
"Silhouette!" she declared triumphantly. The Ward? She started muttering to herself. "She has to be, it makes perfect sense—"
I was less convinced.

She disappeared to talk with Tats for a while after that, more expressive than I'd seen her yet.
When she finally left us alone, she was wearing a look of vindication.

[Smoker 4.3: Taylor?]

I bounded my way home happily, glad of the mist to cloak me.
Somehow I hadn't realized, or equally somehow had forgotten, that there was such a distinction between remembering and doing. Talking, being, with friends, my friends, in my body—it was so much of a difference it felt like a fresh high.
I struggled to stop smiling, then wondered suddenly why I would want to.
My promise to Aunt Zoe to come around for dinner came back into my mind. Had we already done that? I couldn't remember. It would have been a while ago, anyway. Maybe it was time to set another date up.

"The school called," Dad said calmly. He was a darkly glowing cauldron of sick dread, quick-burning relief, and the familiar ocean swell of his always-hot anger. "Where have you been all day? All night?"
"With a few new friends," I beamed out truthfully, ignoring his poor temper. "Good people. Hey, do you think we could have dinner over at Emma's place again soon?"

I reached out to Madison, told her I'd come to some realizations and wanted to have a conversation and apologize for my behavior recently.
After leaving me on read overnight, she said she'd love to meet up soon. Gossip about Arcadia. Had I spoken to Glory Girl yet?

Arcadia itself was going better, I found. I must have been acting more off before than I'd understood, because people started responding better to me as well.
Happiness, I thought, was not a zero-sum game. You didn't have to pull up your own mood by pushing down someone else's, whatever some deluded individuals might believe.
When I smiled around at everyone in the halls, they brightened noticeably. I closed my eyes and basked in their light, tried to draw that into myself to burn too.
I was—end-positive, and I hoped always to be.

We located Bakuda easily enough, just in case, on the first of the reconnaissance missions my Lisa was so fond of. Over on this side she seemed—well, less unstable than Bug Taylor had been acting at some points.
I kept one metaphysical ear on her constant ticking, still, in the event it should ever start to behave more erratically.

Hanging out at the lair—with no major jobs planned or strange people trying to abduct and torture our members, so far as any of us knew—was the most normal I'd felt in a long time.
They did ask that I try to stop using zinc around them, though, at least at the loft. It made a couple of the others uncomfortable, Brian explained privately. Like they were being spied on.
However misguided that idea might be, I was happy to humor the request.
The inconsistencies between Brian's feelings and his actions were often quite troubling, and sometimes it was easier to appreciate Lisa's smiles without seeing what was immediately underlying them.
Alec's acting had been a little off while I was explaining that power, too, I thought. Rachel was the only one who was consistently truthful and forthright.
This wasn't a knock against the rest—most people were completely blind to just how commonplace mild, well-meaning deception was.

"I met them through—" I paused, then paused again, frustratedly aware it had already stretched out too long to sound natural, "—someone I'm sometimes in contact with."
There. Color Dad unimpressed, I joked to myself at his reaction to that.
He gave me a look, and I got my face under control.
"Could I meet them?" he pulled harder on me.
"Well, I'm sure you'd like them."
Actually, I knew he had.
I sighed. I wished I could just dump the memory of his having met them on him, too, and save us both a lot of time.

I was a little disappointed Lisa hadn't asked me to go clothes shopping again yet. I'd been dropping hints. I was concerned she might be getting too used to relying on her power to pick that kind of thing up.
In this life I would be better equipped to handle it. She and Emma approached fashion with the same cold-blooded, single-minded menace, and it was sometimes dangerous to be swept up in their wake. I wore the scars to prove it.
Maybe I'd even make the effort to be an actual participant now. I could picture exactly the blouse to pair with her usual blend of remorse, despair, and sorrowful determination.
Would Emma's clothes fit Lisa? I eyed her over, and she gave me what I thought was a happy smile. Probably not.
We'd have the opportunity eventually, though, I was sure.

Where was all this anger coming from?
Well. Bug Taylor, I realized unhappily, was a very angry version of me. Accepting her own perceptions, as was automatic, was pulling yourself down a false trail. She didn't know it herself.
She was curiously un-self-aware in a lot of ways that were easier to dissect from the outside. Her strange infatuation with Brian was an excellent example, since for whatever reason that failed to transfer over to me in the slightest.
What had led me to develop such a doomed, one-sided, impossible attraction? I couldn't even begin to guess, but I could see at a glance that he had less than no interest in me like that, in either world.
I found myself guiltily glad of the distance he seemed to be keeping. I wasn't entirely sure how to relate to the boy without that bond, however illusory. It had colored her conceptions of him in a quite bizarre manner.

I kept a close eye on Hess.
I could trace out the events that had happened in the wrong timeline perfectly now, I thought.
Another cape, finding another way of abusing power over real people—in civilian life too. Greedy, greedy.
She must have threatened Emma with threats against me, I'd realized, cool relief tempering me all the way through, drawing out the heat. What else could explain it?
My mind danced down the awful extent of her, how would you even describe it, her pyramid scheme of misery? Thinking back, I thought I could see the glints of pain and reluctance behind my old friends' eyes. I ached like overstressed steel for us all, in retrospect.

One evening, when I was brushing past Lisa, threading my way convolutedly towards the comfortingly thick line of the fridge, her power suddenly froze in place and flashed the same color my chromium felt.
I thought I heard a happy crackle from the metal inside me, and it abruptly drained like it'd been burning for a day.
Our screams very nearly overlapped.

"My power is gone," she said weakly, horrified.
"You fixed her!" Alec cheered. "Do Brian next!"
Rachel laughed.
"I think it's temporary," I bluffed, with a flicker of relief that she couldn't call it out right now. No, wait, I had copper running still. She'd asked me to do that herself, ordered me to, no matter what anyone said, even her, frequently.
I eyed the treacherous pool of power, kept a wary distance from everyone, and sat with her for a short while as her own slowly returned to normal.
Her calming down enough took much longer, but eventually she grit her teeth and admitted we needed to test it again.
Striker ability, she told me. Please don't use that one around them any more, either.

Emma's petty pranks and unkind comments had seemed so much worse than what Hess did at the time, but I was well acquainted by now with Bug Taylor's skewed perspective. It was probably an inevitable part of her choosing to be a cape.
Had she hurt Emma herself too, though? I thought, narrowing my eyes at her when she turned away from my gaze. She appeared to be kept better under control here. We'd see how long that lasted.

I worried about Lisa, sometimes. She was a much more introspective person than she liked to let on, and it hurt me to see her hurting. I helped where I could, delicately nourishing the guttering scraps of her self-respect and slowly fanning the waning flames of her resolve when I had the opportunity.
It's not as if it was anything someone else couldn't do with the right word whispered into the right ear in just the right way, if they knew the words and the whisperings and the ways a little better than I could manage some of the time these days, and what were friends for?

The place was looking a little bare now, I thought.
I took to keeping my eyes closed and listening contentedly to their powers' barks and purrs, a terrified whimper and a swallowing absence.
They grew as familiar as my own heartbeat.

Lisa had explained the specifics of Coil's power to me, and I'd felt a flare of sympathy for the poor man. It sounded like an even more disorientating version of my gold, and she didn't think he could stop burning his at all.
Was that what had driven him crazy, in the end?
Well. It didn't matter now. I had made Lisa a promise, and, whatever else I'd lost, from one life or another, I could at least still keep my promises.
I was just thankful my own power was so simple in comparison, and that I was learning to forge my selves together so harmoniously.

Dad ambushed me one evening.
Madison had spoken to him. Some busybody at the school, too.
He talked, haltingly, about what it might mean when someone who was a little down began acting too happy.
Too happy? Who judged this? He really wasn't making much sense.
"Why are you only getting concerned once I start feeling better?" I interrupted him eventually, confused.
His head whited out with something unidentifiable.
Why was he being so damn cryptic lately?
"Dad, I'm going on a run," I told him, not wanting to deal with this right now. "I might crash at Lisa's tonight. She offered to let me."
Another me, and another Lisa.
"I love you. I, uh, I'll be in touch. Goodbye."
"Taylor," he said, I'm not sure how loud, as I pulled myself into the dark.
I could hear everything for blocks around. I pretended not to catch it.
My face was dry by the time I got back to my friends.

[Smoker 4.4: Alec]

She didn't register to my power, either, and I jokingly pretended to sympathize with Tats over it. I'd been warned not to prank her using that anyway.
Where I would normally see the spread-out map of a nervous system, she had—nothing. It was sometimes like staring at a statue, or at my own reflection trapped in a mirror.
A marionette come to life, pretending to be a real boy.

"You all seem to be taking the alternate timeline stuff—surprisingly well?" said the over-stretched-out girl scout Tats had been so obsessed with lately. I'd always suspected she was swinging for the other team, but if this was her taste in women then there truly were some very badly crossed wires in her brain.
Tats' expression stayed fixed for a second too long.
"Not the weirdest thing Tattletale has told us to believe," Grue replied, boringly.
"I was watching tentacle porn from a different dimension when you knocked," I shrugged.
Was Bitch even paying attention?

She took offense to the couch, for whatever reason, and sat hovering cross-legged in mid-air somehow instead. I wouldn't complain about having more legroom, I suppose, however zany her logic might be.

— B-[Al]-T: Classic. Big laughs all around. Worth the multiple lectures.
— [Pb]&J: Spotted it right away. Lisa asked if it was a childhood favorite. Point her.
— Pout[In]e: Not bad, actually. Interesting texture.
— Chicken caesium salad: An eight-step recipe? Who am I, fucking Martha Stewart?

A spider was crawling up her arm, and she was looking down at it fondly.

I was genuinely interested, I think, to see her test her Master power on Grue. He didn't enjoy the experience, and I could relate. If she were more attractive, I'd have thought she was one of my half-sisters.
Had father dearest ever visited here while riding out a heroic dose of something interesting? I certainly hoped not.

"All I did was ask if he had started yet and he got all offended."
I rubbed her back. Pretty sure people weren't supposed to have that many bones.
"It's okay. Some guys can be weird about that kind of thing."
Not me, obviously. Hadn't ever been an issue, one way or the other.
"I mean, I'm sure he was trying his best?"
I really needed to start carrying a camera. I might never see Grue looking so emasculated again.

Apparently she had been trying to give half-smiles. I advised her to re-adjust to an averaged baseline.

"Well, Lisa?" I offered when our resident ghoul shamefacedly left for a walk—with Bitch and Bitch's babies—after tripping and discovering she could delete powers.
She claimed they were scouting out another new cape—a noise like 'a pair of scissors made of glitter?'—but the girl was frankly terrible at lying. I was probably better in the cradle.
"What," she said in her usual tone of voice, sitting down with a drink and rubbing her eyes.
"You're always saying your power stops you from enjoying 'relationships?'"
I waggled my eyebrows seductively.
She paused, winced, and sighed disgustedly. Yeah, she knew where I was going with this.
"It lasts like two minutes."
"Brian, batter up!" I yelled, falling backwards onto the couch laughing.

She told us she'd handle the cameras.
Oh, as to that, she chimed in helpfully, she could easily just scramble all the metal parts inside. She had better stay away from my gaming rig with that attitude.

"Skitt[Fe]r? No?"

"So, how do I look?" she asked, blank-facedly, all dressed up and somewhere to go.
Her—mask gave her a cute little speech impediment, what with not being able to open her jaw properly.
"I have had scarier nightmares," I said comfortingly, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Her posture straightened, and I tousled where her hair would normally be.
"Now let's go out there and get 'mucho cred!'"

[Smoker 4.5: Lisa]

I was building a house of cards. On sand.
"Well, when I touch myself, I have her memories."
I closed my eyes.
quicksand
"Are you—touching yourself right now?"
While Alec was fucking tasing me.

I had asked her to keep her copper up as much as possible. She didn't seem aware of how twitchy she got without it, and that was saying something.
A few models of Coil's power might be covered by the effect, I rationalized, or whichever other Thinkers he had access to. And there was the constant looming threat of Alec getting bored and poking at her with his power.
Truthfully, though, reading her myself was just—not pleasant. I could see a lot of ways to break her, and some of the ways she already had been. Some of them were quite familiar.
Seeing her use gold may have been almost as painful for me as using it was for her. It really was a very—intimate act.
I tried not to feel too envious. She'd probably only compliment me on it.

I could recognize myself playing her, of course, even across the universe divide and filtered through a rather unreliable medium. 'Cops and robbers,' really?
Whatever the specifics of her escapades as 'Skitter' (and didn't that sound like quite a story?), 'Bug Lisa' didn't yet seem to have succeeded in seducing her into joining a genuine squad of scoundrels.
Her file came back to my mind. A danger to herself? Maybe. A danger to us? Also a worryingly strong maybe, depending on her reactions to a few things.
It gave me the unwelcome feeling of being mad at myself for mistakes I hadn't even made, technically.
opportunity to bond with team over your poor decision-making

Coil was happy to hear we'd 'recruited' another cape, and didn't ask too many questions. I tried not to read too much into that. My power was quick to inform me he was setting up dark designs and nefarious conspiracies involving her already, but that was nothing new. I'd probably get similar readings about his dustman.
He said his files had her flagged as a low-tier Mover, from her jaunting around the city over the last few months. Triggers and mentality generally characterized by a desire to escape a situation, to flee, to run—I suppose she fit the criteria, at a glance and if you didn't know her. It gave me some hope. I could work with that. He was being hands-off enough lately that I had a little welcome latitude.
That looked to be her PRT threat rating, too, I found out when I later went back to re-check their records of active but non-declared parahumans. She matched up to a tentative Mover 2, no known affiliations or history of vigilantism. 'Unlikely to align with E88'—well, someone was having fun when they wrote this.

The less the others learned, the better. For multiple reasons.
Brian was the biggest concern there. He was freaking out as much as he was capable of showing as it was. Admittedly, a relatively reasonable and rather relatable reaction to having a strange cape show up at your front door, implicitly threaten your life, and inform you you're best friends now. Then sit down and watch Animal Planet for four hours.
Alec didn't care so long as he got paid, and Rachel—well, who the fuck knew? She actually seemed to like the girl, which was possibly one of the more alarming parts of the whole thing.

She couldn't 'hear' his power, frustratingly. As soon as practicable, we'd checked out all the ones in her range. Well, all the ones that she didn't recognize as being heroes from their work schedules—turned out she was healthily paranoid about unmasking those, at least, whatever else she had to say about them. None of the people fit, though, unless Skidmark was a true grandmaster of intrigue.
I felt a spasm of hope whenever she reported a new one, but they all ended in disappointments. I thought, if she dropped her copper, I could maybe figure it out. I wavered on wanting her to. I found I was regretting a few decisions I'd made recently.
We needed to wait until he'd meet her face-to-face. She had a plan for that.
Oh, of course it would work—it already had, hadn't it?

What she called 'a medium pull' was an intense, nearly painful surge of emotion. I felt that for myself, out of morbid curiosity.
Brian very much did not want to discuss what stronger attacks were like, but said he was confident it would immobilize someone. The attitude really was not necessary. Nobody made him volunteer.
It calmed him down some about my vetoing an attempt to overpower her at the doorstep that first night, anyway. The revelation that her tin could penetrate his darkness—a Trump-aspected sensory enhancement?—calmed him down even further, to the point he calmly started absenting himself almost entirely from our company.

The problem was, I didn't know if something I said here would contradict something I said, uh, there, and set her against us as suddenly as a slightly conflicting shading of the truth had set her for us.
Our best hope was that she just wouldn't synchronize with her doppelgänger again. Which wasn't much of one, in the long term. She seemed happy not to for now, claiming to be having a minor difference of opinion with herself, but could we really expect that to last?
The solution? Board games and karaoke, apparently. Rachel took surprisingly well to Settlers of Catan, and anything was better than hearing what the other girl thought passed for a pleasant tune.

I did consider helping her learn more of her metals, but after she'd blithely explained her 'process' I wasn't sure she was in a fit frame of mind to try. It was a very delicate balance as it was. Like the end of one of our games of Jenga.
Not to mention I was a little worried myself about what they might turn out to do—there was an obvious trend, and it wasn't one many capes would be happy to have her explore further in close proximity to them.
Broad-ranging immunity to Master and Thinker effects, according to my power, and to all the ones we had available to test. Separate abilities for pursuit and tracking in the long and short range. Power neutralization with a touch.
A method of information gathering in disposable timelines, if some of my suspicions concerning the actual purpose of her gold were correct.
If we fed her exactly the wrong combination of things, would she suddenly start manifesting Grey Boy bubbles around us?

It would be easy to stab her in the back. Literally, if I wanted—actually, it might be safest.
2c worth of foil and the ceramic paring knife from the kitchen. Ask her to drop copper. Aim between the C1 and C2.
There'd probably be more danger in attacking one of Rachel's dogs. Well, no. There definitely would be. Maybe even from her.
Something about the look of trust in her eyes whenever hers met mine never let it seem like a real possibility, anyway.

Maybe I should have been trying to help her, instead of doing the equivalent of pointing one end towards enemy and hoping I wasn't staring at the front. From what I'd gathered in the short periods her power wasn't blocking mine, it was—well.
Maybe I could have. Maybe I would have, if a butterfly had flapped its wings just a little differently. She certainly seemed convinced of it.

The boss did agree to set up and monitor the job the girl wanted. The details even worked out pretty much the same as she'd 'predicted.'
I could tell he had ulterior motives for it, but—though they might not be exactly the same as they'd been in a divergent world several weeks ago—I guess in a way it was his own plan in the first place.
God, was her nonsense catching?

Her eyes hooded a little when she saw us getting into our cape outfits, something I'd told everyone to avoid doing around her until absolutely necessary.
"All good, T?" I asked lightly, playing up the friend act.
"Yeah. Just thinking."

There was a crashing sound from the main floor.
"That was according to plan," I told Judas, who might well be the smartest person in this room.
I could hear shouting, then screaming.
"Almost done," Rachel said shortly.
I closed my eyes briefly, and helped finish loading up the last dog.

Brian withdrew a gap in his darkness.
"We're leaving!" I shouted. "Grab on and follow!"
I looked back to see her still fighting. If you could call it that. I knew she could hear me.
"It has tasted the blood of Man," Alec said sagely, "and can live among us peacefully no longer."
I kept watching until she was gone.

[Smoker 4.6: BITCH]

She was okay with dogs. Knew when to back the fuck off, anyway. Better than the other idiots could manage half the time.

They were looking at a chart someone had stuck on the wall.
"At least you've not been eating lead," Grew said, joking.
The girl looked away.
Region laughed after a minute, then made his face straight.
Region gasped.
"Atomic number eight-two, Brutus?" he said, smiling and making eyes at Lisa.
Asshole. He thought he was so fucking funny.

The new cape dressed up in her costume on the morning the boss ordered and stared at herself in the mirror for a bit. It wasn't as dumb as the ones the others had.
Bandages wrapped all round her head, even her eyes and ears. Tight-layered clothes turned inside out. Thick ceramic armor stuff under a t-shirt. Good quality gloves Lisa said she had to wear.
I told her to get some arm and knee pads for next time and made a noise when she said thanks. She didn't know how to get me over to Bug World yet, but she'd promised to help me take down Hookwolf's pits here at least. That would be thanks.
She was playing straight, I thought. Didn't like him much, she'd said, rubbing around her eye.
Everyone else believed her when she said she beat that fuckhead Lung, even if it never actually happened. This was probably my best bet for doing both. I could wait when I needed to.

"You have to keep most of your powers secret," Lisa was saying in the voice she used to try to get the dogs to do something I didn't want them to. "Yes, I promise to watch out for Panacea and not talk to her. If she's even there. No, I know, we're not going to actually hurt any—" pause, "—real heroes."
I ignored them. Lisa always talked too much when she was scared. She needed to stop drinking so much though. Was making her sound stupider than usual.
They'd given me a metal harness for Judas. I had to make sure he only grew enough that it was a good fit.

People freaked out a little when we walked in. Anjelica's claws clicked on the tile. Probably due a trim soon.
I started bulking her up properly. She was supposed to deal with Argos, or whatever his name was, until he was locked down better.
"My name is Magnet," she lied loudly, saying the name a bit too hard. "My friends and I are robbing this bank, but none of you have to be involved in that."
She waved goodbye at the cameras and they made cracking sounds and fell down. She didn't need to do that. Just showing off. Knew she'd do fine as a cape.
"I promise I want everybody here to leave safely. Please just focus on what you want your brains to look like once this is over and I can help make that happen. If nobody starts acting crazy, we can all get through this very happily."
They did what she said easily enough after that.

She stood there, flexing her fingers, staring up and around the walls randomly, then stopped moving the way she did sometimes.
A bolt made of shadows flew from somewhere at Anjelica, but bent away to splash against Taylor's chest before I could block it.
"Silly-ette," she said, turning her head toward the corner and tilting it. "I'm glad you could make it this time."

[Smoker 4.7: The Undersiders]

"Taylor Hebert," Tattletale said, tacking up two photos of the girl on a notice board. She had taken off her mask at some point. Was she crying? "Taylors, I guess. Let's call them Taylor A and Taylor B. Whether B is a power simulation or something isn't significant."
"B for—" Regent began.
"Yes, Alec."
She rummaged through a foil-lined bag and pulled out and pinned up a character assessment, then compared them aloud quickly.

TAYLOR A:
— POWER: IDENTIFYING/COUNTERING/HUNTING CAPES
— TRUMP TRIGGER DUE TO BEING COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN LARGE CAPE FIGHT
— EMMA BARNES ONCE GOOD FRIEND, NOW VERY DEAD
— SOPHIA HESS, WARD, PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN, NOW FIXATION DUE TO ACQUIRED MEMORIES
— DOES NOT WANT TO USE POWERS
— HATE FOR/FEAR OF CAPES, FEAR OF BECOMING CAPE
— FEAR OF BECOMING VILLAIN
— FEAR OF CAUSING COLLATERAL DAMAGE
— FEAR OF INVITING RETRIBUTION FROM CAPES, SPECIFICALLY PROTECTORATE, SPECIFICALLY ONTO FATHER
— MENTALLY ILL—POWER-RELATED EDNOS/SELF-HARM/DELUSIONS, POSSIBLE PSYCHOSIS, POSSIBLE BRAIN DAMAGE? SEE MUSIC TASTE
— EXTREMELY SOCIALLY ISOLATED
— BELIEVES HAS JOINED/BEFRIENDED UNDERSIDERS

TAYLOR B:
— POWER: INSECT CONTROL
— MASTER TRIGGER DUE TO SOCIAL ISOLATION
— EMMA BARNES ONCE GOOD FRIEND, NOW MASTERED? MANIPULATED?
— SOPHIA HESS, WARD, CAUSE OF TRIGGER? NOT AS GOOD AT RUNNING AS SHE THINKS SHE IS?
— WANTS TO USE POWERS
— HAS BECOME CAPE
— HAS BECOME VILLAIN
— HAS CAUSED WIDE-SCALE COLLATERAL DAMAGE
— HAS RECENTLY ATTACKED PROTECTORATE
— MENTALLY ILL—MASTER
— EXTREMELY SOCIALLY ISOLATED
— BELIEVES HAS JOINED/BEFRIENDED UNDERSIDERS

"Anything to add? Besides the clusterfuck at the bank. We'll go over that soon."
"I never wanted anything to do with this," Grue stated. "Even the original plan was a bad idea. We should have cut out after she first showed up."
"She did say Skitter has better hair than her," Regent mused.
"Anything important to add?"
"—No. Although I object to the Master slander."
"Overruled. And we get it, Brian, it's 20/20. So. Through some stupid power bullshit, Taylor A has periodically been gaining the 'memories' of Taylor B. This has not been working wonders for her."
Grue looked at her.
"Yes, okay. Their worldviews are extremely incompatible, and getting increasingly incompatibler. A while ago it led her to abandon all her social connections here, mirroring B's social isolation, because in this other world they're tainted."
"What, she just bugged out on them?"
"More recently and relevantly, it led her to try to gain the social connection of, well, us. B joined the Undersiders, where we're now her only 'friends,' more on that later, so she felt like she could too. Note that she still didn't want to be a cape. Note also that I still wish you'd let me talk to you before you started hassling her about that, Brian."
"Well, what the fuck was I supposed to think? All you said was that she was a new member and to make her welcome."
"She can literally see our deception and hear us whisper from half a block away. All you had to do was pass around some Cheez-Its or something while I organized finding a notepad."
"If she can see lies then why doesn't she go blind looking at you?"
"'There are none so blind as those that will not see.' Her idée is firmly fixed. Or was. I'm the Thinker, Brian, let me do the thinking."
"Oh, because that's working out so fucking well."
"Do you think she's this weird for the Othersiders?"
"She did," Bitch interjected.
"Did what, Rachel?" Tattletale said patiently.
"Did join us. You said so."
"She was lying, Bitch. Do you need that spelled out? Oh, wait, that wouldn't help either, would it?"
"Fuck you."
"Her joining was never a real option, Rachel. Believe me, I'm sorry."
"Fuck you."
"She's deeply, deeply delusional right now, maybe in full psychosis, but when or if she's herself again she's almost certainly going to hate us as much as the Nazis. As much as the Protectorate who basically steered a blender over her and her friend. We need to not be here when that happens, and it may already have."
"Fuck you," Bitch repeated again, elegantly. "Fuck all of you."
She whistled her dogs to her and left, throwing down her mask as she went. No great loss, all told.
"Is this going to be the last meeting of The Midnight Society?" Regent said plaintively.
"I—think she'll be fine. Ugh. So the main thing to remember is that she thinks of us as friends, at least for now. She's also made us some promises, which seem to be another thing she's latched onto as a way of keeping 'control—'"
Well, that was enough of this.
"Move in," I ordered.
Two knocks echoed sharply around the loft.
I smiled.

[Interlude: Coil]

Taylor Hebert.

The name first came to my attention almost accidentally.
A slight difference in a clash I was instigating with some Empire forces led to one of the girl's schoolfriends getting caught in the crossfire, and during the subsequent rampage she demonstrated herself as being impressively difficult to put down. Luckily my other self was still salvageable, and, after I gathered this new cape's identity, I added exploring its uses to my list of tasks carried out in doomed realities.

I was amused to find that the Protectorate was already aware of her existence. I was too, in fact, when I checked. She had been running around the city for weeks by then, but the team I'd sent to investigate following her fairly public trigger concluded it was only a minor Mover ability. Rather like using a nuclear reactor to power your bedside lamp, really.

The Master effect was a very nasty and unexpected surprise. I wasted two snatch squads before they managed to sedate the girl.
More realities were discarded when she woke up and destroyed her bindings, along with anything else around her.
An attempt to gain co-operation via control of the father was an abject failure, though it gave further interesting insights into her real capabilities.
Direct approach through an agent—no.

Hebert seemed to be deteriorating rapidly by this point, so I helped speed along a transfer to Arcadia that the monitoring scripts attached to her name flagged as coming through the system.
If the girl did snap again, much better to do it among the Wards Emily was responsible for, where it would at least help with my plans for her. She may have successfully distanced herself officially from the events that spawned this situation, but the right words delivered to the right ears would make that meaningless.
I also took the time to frustrate any efforts to get her professional assistance. That would hardly do. The father was becoming increasingly and unreasonably persistent, however. I'd have arrangements made for him after this was done, purely for being such a pest.

Communication proved fruitless—she could wreck most communications, and most communicators, and failing that, she could somewhat spectacularly wreck herself.
With this starting to seem like more trouble than it was worth, I verified that there was at least no issue with putting a bullet through her skull from half a mile away. That was often a comfort.
My patience in not pulling the trigger on that, as it were, was rewarded when she suddenly gifted herself to me, and I laughed out loud in unappreciated synchrony when it happened. Surely this was fate?

Lovely little 'Lisa' was a significantly easier target for both acquisition and inquisition, and I was well familiar with all the soft places to press to get everything I wanted from that one.
The quirk with aluminum she reluctantly relayed finally let my plans fully flower. I found that besides blocking any ability to manipulate metals, a covering of the stuff also removed her power to enflame the protected person's emotions. This was eventually narrowed down to a more workable head shield, which I had distributed among my men.
Later debrief sessions revealed copper, a mild curiosity, bronze, a definite concern, and, lastly, chromium, an outright nightmare.
For everyone else, anyway.
According to my Tattletale's tattled tales, my own power evaded detection—a highly convenient effect I occasionally observed in Thinkers I interacted with—and, with the rest I knew, I had never had any intention of being in the same room as the chit.
With some checks to be sure her repertoire wouldn't be extended further, that was all fairly manageable.

So. I had a borderline-sane, greater-half-suicidal cape.
Already primed to attack any other capes it could find, which looked to be the majority of them by now. I hadn't even had to order the scouting missions myself, amusingly.
Willing to completely flout the so-called unwritten rules, and whose laughably simple weakness only I was aware of—a weakness I could easily 'discover' and exploit even in my civilian guise.
At minimum this would shake up the board, and, handled properly, might hand me the Bay's cape scene uncontested and earn me a commendation with it. Was mayorship out of the question? We'd see.

The one issue was that there was something of a time limit. Recent events seemed to have assisted in stabilizing the situation, but in this case stabilized was hardly stable.
Casual and accidental testing had found four direct routes of provocation, and I could easily guess at several others. These were all tracked now, of course—the dog girl's mutts had never been safer—but I suspected it was like trying to plug the leaks in a ship made of tissue paper.
With attempts to predict if some other freak occurrence would set this smoking bomb off in a less controlled way being useless, I was forced to hasten my planning far more than I'd usually like.

The debacle at the bank I watched through a few cameras I'd had shielded using a little specially sourced transparent aluminum.
Given more time, I might have tried to get sufficient quantities of this to line my base, but, besides anything else, the one Tinker who made it in bulk was on back-order from everyone shifting to Shatterbird-resistant materials.
Instead, a team of decorators was brought in to comprehensively cover the place in some kind of foil-lined wallpaper. It helped with damp, I was assured. The available designs were frankly atrocious, but it stood up well enough to the necessary test run.

"Sil-hou-et-te, Sil-hou-et-te," the figure was screaming through tightly clenched teeth, stalking furiously towards the fallen shadow. "Dor-mez-vous? Dor-mez-vous?"

The Wards' information assessment, once Hebert seemingly either got bored or came to herself and quit the field, was predictably wrongheaded.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Aejit, we can't all just walk it off."
"Nothing, G-Man? Remotely controlled tinkertech, maybe?"
"Broke anyone's face lately, Sil? Hey, not an invitation!"

Sirens began tolling for Boston that evening. Another unanticipated blessing I could only take as the hand of fate.
The munitions I'd had emplaced around the city were detonated without incident. Within the hour, Bakuda was left on Protectorate ENE's doorstep, bound.
Everything important secured, I prepared myselves and settled down to wait out the night.

Spoiler: Note

My New Mistborn Roommate Isn't Suffering From Psychosis—I'm the One Suffering!

I don't think this is going the way people were expecting, even the parts I was expecting people to expect, which is, well, concerning. I'm not sure the story I was attempting to tell has been coming through properly. I should have tried to get a beta reader, I guess, but they'd need a lot of Worm background to understand basically any part of it.
This chapter bloated slightly in editing, trying to leave less to implication, and I currently hate the thing too much to be objective about trimming it down. There are things in here I know I liked maybe a week ago, so I'm posting it anyway and hoping the problem is just my brain right now (and to stick to the deadline I set), but, yeah, not happy with it.

Kind of worried no one else is going to find my delusional fanfic writer Taylor as funny as I do.
She WILL hit those stations of canon, and Emma did NOTHING wrong, or may a Coil plot strike me down this very evening!

The Undersiders being so badly matched against Taylor is also maybe only funny to me.
I'm choosing to interpret Brian's darkness as being something like Mist, leaving it uniquely vulnerable to her tin, purely because I think it's amusing. Bitch might have a chance, but she actually gets on with her.
Taylor of course earned Bitch's affection by Mastering that cat back in chapter one. Really playing the long game. This Bitch will set herself up on Earth Gimel as a sheep baron and build roads everywhere for no reason.

Lisa's retreat into overwrought language when she's feeling panicked is her own issue and definitely not mine.

And yes, Coil is currently scheming while wearing a tinfoil hat and griping internally about the floral design 70s wallpaper in his base. This is in fact Mistborn canon.

This may not be something everyone will get, again, and it won't be gone over more in-story so I'll note it now, but Danny was understandably a little worried. He's been worried a lot lately.
Taylor was accidentally showing a few signs of someone preparing to take their own life—sudden happiness after a long depressive spell, seemingly erratic or self-destructive behavior, distancing from people close to her, making amends with other people she feels she might have wronged, etc.
Obviously everybody concerned about her is being silly, and this is all just from her power. Our girl is actually doing fine. This is what we call comedy.

So, is this all too unbelievable? Lisa and Coil were a menace to write here—are they coming off as too contrived? too one-note?
Coil being comically, pettily evil—well, I mean, that's kind of his thing. It lets me fit so much more bullying onto this Taylor, too. Her having a suicide switch and overloading on her metals 24/7 was plot-relevant this whole time.
I hope the ways Lisa is being stupid don't seem too forced. She's under a lot of stress very related to her trigger, among other disadvantages, some of which she's even aware of. Taylor is pushing many of her buttons, sometimes literally.
The sad part is that canon Lisa couldn't help canon Taylor either. This whole situation sucks and was set up by a real asshole, honestly.

Also, I feel like I should be explicit regarding this now—powers are going to continue to basically just be used as plot devices, mostly. Don't expect huge action sequences. Taylor is not a very Mistborn-y Mistborn, even when she comes more into her abilities.
I'm sorry if that's disappointing, and it's not where I thought the story would go originally myself, but that's the way it worked out with how the character developed. Is this something I ought to note at the beginning? I don't want to feel like I'm misleading anyone.
The title is kind of a hint. It's all about mist-taken identity.

Edited 10/23 to add another section as an exposition dump. If anything else is unclear please do let me know.

 

[therewolf]

Chapter 5: Rioter

Spoiler: Note

Another section was added to the last chapter about a day after posting, as a small recap of where Taylor's character is right now.
It's not really anything that hadn't been said or implied before or in this one, but might be worth checking out if you missed it.

[Rioter 5.1: ???]

I could fix this city, I thought, licking my ever-dry lips as I flew, ping-ponging between womb-wide lines with ease, listening intently to the rhythms I knew so well by now.
The only thing still trying to slow me down was this frustratingly thick air.
I throw off the remains of my armor safely over a dark park, and enjoy the added speed.

It would be easy.
It would actually, I reasoned, be harder not to, I was pretty sure.
Do I really want to make extra effort for no good purpose?

Kaiser should be a snack.
Kaiser maybe would be a snack, I exulted, laughing, soaring high up into the horizon.
What would I find in burning him?

I picture myself as a supernova of hysterical joy, hung in a silent night's sky, warming a sleeping city with wavelengths no one else will ever perceive.

[Rioter 5.2: Grue]

"Good haul, I thought. So. How's the weather in Kyushu, anyway?"
"Shut the fuck up, Alec."

[Rioter 5.3: ???]

I could make everyone feel so safe they would start to think I was a danger, in comparison.

[Rioter 5.4: Taylor?]

"—lor, take off the mask, please."
"It's not actually a mask," I reminded him with a laugh.
"You—robbed a bank, Taylor."
"Well, yes, I suppose. It was part of a bigger plan, though," I explained. "And nobody was really hurt, were they?"
Were they? Bug Taylor did worse, and they were fine after that. Maybe I had got a little carried away, but it's not like he knew what the plan was originally.
He did not look impressed. I irritatedly yanked at a spot I thought might be the proud-feelings that were malfunctioning for some reason.
"I can give back the money, if it's that big a deal to you? Um," I said, thinking. "My share of the money, at least. I'll ask for it. It honestly wasn't about that."
He stood there, defeat scrawled all throughout his body for anyone to see. That was supposed to only be for me. I was stunned to think we'd lost this special connection.
"I think I need to call the police."
What?
"What? No," I said, twisting the guts of his phone to match my own. I laid a hand on his shoulder, meeting his eyes, smiling. "You don't have to do that."
There was a sudden swell somewhere in the city's song, and I got distracted in it for a moment.
"—lor, please, you are not well."

[Rioter 5.5: ???]

I started throwing up, but managed to begin swallowing it back down before my metals all ran out completely.
Almost out of zinc, somehow. When had that happened?
I took more, then more.

[Rioter 5.6: Alan]

Danny woke us up to tell us to get somewhere safer.
Taylor wasn't with him, and he was crying so hard we didn't ask.
Should have left this damned city a long time ago.

[Rioter 5.7: ???]

The city was burning.
I couldn't tell so precisely any more which parts of that other people could see, and sometimes got a little spooked myself when they reacted negatively to something.
Shh, I thought, the flames in my soul reaching out to soothe their fears and worries, my fingers reaching out to trail through the billowing clouds of panic as I zipped by in delicate sweeping arcs.
It's okay. I can help. Just let me.

[Rioter 5.8: BITCH]

I got all the dogs out safe after she was done. Kept her promise, at least. More than you can say for most people.
Reminded her about the knee pads.

[Rioter 5.9: ???]

I was falling, slowly compared to the speeds I'd been getting so used to.

[Rioter 5.10: Coil]

The figure fell like a lightning bolt towards the Boardwalk, where it edged into what was currently one of the quieter parts of the Docks, as I watched dispassionately through the 'snitch.'
That seemed to be as much use as could reasonably be wrung from the situation. Hardly the most efficient way of going about things—did she really have to start with Lung?—though it certainly had spectacle.
There were still a few irritating pieces I could take off the board and lay at her feet, while the chaos lasted. Retrieving Othala from where the girl had last stashed her would be a mortal wound to what remained of the Empire, but that was no reason to withhold the coup de grâce.
Farther afield, the recently-declared second S-class threat in Boston offered other intriguing possibilities. If I could collect some of these deformed facsimiles, or arrange to have some of my more valuable tools so duplicated—but, well. One must tend to one's own garden first.
My newest pet was also having issues reading Hebert, and had yet to be trained to a functional state besides. For this, however—
This girl in this city on this night had precious few allies, and none in a position to assist her. I scarcely needed a superpower to calculate those odds.
The moment she crashed and broke, I dismissed my backup reality, divided myself again, and set myselves properly to work.
"Magnet sighted moving in the direction of Downtown," I droned into my comms. "All units, please be advised—"

[Rioter 5.11: ???]

My hand was reaching towards my pocket, but one barbed tentacle slapped it away and another spiked its way through the palm, pinning me against the asphalt.
Hookwolf walked over to me, reforming his body as a man and reeling himself in by the spike before releasing it.

Why hadn't I seen that much metal?
What was I forgetting?

His thoughts were wild, murderous. I could see him stoking his self up to it.
"Looks like," he explained calmly, "you hit your limit. Everyone has one. Even me. Not that you'll ever see it."
He kicked me in the head.

My thoughts were dimly flickering soap bubbles, sliding around each other but never quite merging.
I looked to the pools of power still in me, saw one with an unfamiliar resonance. Smelled the puke trapped in my mask.
I don't want to test again right now, I thought reluctantly, I already feel awful.

[Rioter 5.12: Lisa]

I curled in on myself, alone with my ghosts.

[Rioter 5.13: ???]

He was standing over me.

Desperate, I pulled on every part of his brain I could see, hoping to drown out whatever was driving him.
Eventually something else started sprouting naturally.
"Look. Kid."
I anchored everything inside me to that.
He stopped, closed his eyes for a second, and looked back at me.
"You have been a huge pain in the ass," he said reasonably, then sighed. "I should really just finish putting you down. It'd be kinder."

I pointed myself away from there and pulled again.
"We can always use useful people, though. Warriors can go far in the Empire, and we look out for each other. I could," he offered, "call in Othala. Have her heal you up."
Useful? My mind blanked, picturing Emma, as I last saw her in this life, looking—much as I probably did right now. Imagined Othala, reaching down with a kind smile. Was she just not useful enough?
"You haven't even killed anyone yourself yet, I don't think? Not any of ours, anyway. You would not," he confided reassuringly, "be the only one with a ticket to the Birdcage already filled out."
I didn't respond. How could I?

He crouched down and grabbed what he'd left of my face.
"Hey. This is a better offer than you should expect. Surprised I'm making it."
He was, I thought. I traced its path through his head.
He slapped me, jolting me back to myself.
Oh. I could do that, too.
I burned tin, hard, and unwillingly returned the rest of the way to my body, for maybe the final time.

[Rioter 5.14: Alec]

I lay on Grue's couch, bravely ignoring the feeling of my stylish tinfoil hat, watching the clouds of ash rising up over the skyline outside the window.
It was pretty, in its way.
"Looks kind of like—mountains, don't you think?"
He didn't respond.
"My clothes are going to get absolutely ruined by all of that, you do understand."
I heard the creak of his standing up.
"Hey, can I borrow something tattier from you to wear until it dies off?"
The curtains were being drawn.

[Rioter 5.15: ???]

There was an alien metal in me singing out a proud tone, clear and strong.
I looked down at the spike piercing my hand. Had I known I could do that?

Before he could take his hands off me or I could forget again, I let my chromium loose.
His power flickered and died away as a new one flamed to life inside me.

Blazing fear and shock overtook his world as familiar blue lines overlaid mine.
Bracing myself for the impact and hoping this hurt him half as much as it would me, I pulled as hard as I could on his mask.

His head snapped back with a crunch that sounded like a thunderclap through my tin, and he fell backwards to the ground.

[Rioter 5.16: Danny]

"—reports of Magnet downed on the Boardwalk—"
"—do not approach—"
"—PRT en route on foot to establish a perimeter, ETA—"
I threw Kurt's scanner down on the grass and ran to my girl.

[???: ???]

It was getting very, very cold, and I knew that was wrong, because I could still see the fire, creeping in.
I wished I could see properly, but the recoil had torn me out of the spike, and there was no iron in me.
There was a little less in me with every staccato stutter of my slowing heart.
Tin, again, gasping. Again.

I wished I could speak with Dad. Mom.
I wished I could see Emma again, one last time.
I wished I could say farewell to myself.
I—I could do that, couldn't I? I thought blearily.

I eventually just ripped off her earring and, after some consideration, dropped it in my biggest gut wound.
No point rationing it out now, I thought, ration-ally. I laughed.
Flaring it hard. Ignoring Bug Taylor, she looks worse than I feel.
No offense, I thought to her kindly.

I laid myself so I was looking to the other side, and motioned her to come over.
She knelt down beside me. She looked so worried, despite her empty head. Such a sweet girl.
"I just want to say," I began, and then she tried to use her hands to hold the pieces of me together.
Things—got quite confusing for a moment, and then, with a sudden snap, there was no gold in me.

There was no anything in me, any more, and I felt emptier than I had in a long while.

[Interlude]

Numbly poking at an unscarred face reflected in a storefront window, she knew she wouldn't be burning that metal again any time soon.
She had a suspicion she'd just killed one of the better parts of herself.

Spoiler: Note

So. Coil has fallen for Taylor's cunning plan of going insane and letting him win. More on that later.
Lung was an ambitious initial attempt for an underweight 15-year-old Striker, and did not react calmly to either fear blasts or temporary depowering. I do respect the commitment to the bit, though.
For any confusion about what happened with Hookwolf, see the first scene of the fic and the doctor's monologue a few scenes after. Also the page for Steel, I guess.
For any confusion about the rest, well, hold on. Taylor is very close to her trigger, here. Consider who's telling this story. This should make slightly more sense soon.
I'm feeling extremely guilty about how this and the next couple of chapters go, so I'll post another on Saturday so as to not draw it out too much.

Edited 31/10/2025:
Shh, I thought, soothing their fears and worries, trailing my fingers through the billowing clouds of panic
to
Shh, I thought, the flames in my soul reaching out to soothe their fears and worries, my fingers reaching out to trail through the billowing clouds of panic

Reminded her about the pads.
to
Reminded her about the knee pads.