Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Taylor
I emphatically did not want to be at work right now. It was a holiday, a school night, and I had an obnoxious paper due by midnight. I was leaning on the counter, facing the espresso machine and mentally outlining my essay when someone landed outside the shop. For all that powers were ubiquitous, outright flight was rare enough to be remarkable when you saw it. I watched the figure through my swarm as she approached the door.
An athletically built woman, she clearly spent more time on strength training than I did. She had platinum blonde hair, long, done in a braid.
She wore a slightly oversized black leather jacket over a white shirt that was tight enough to be flattering without being trashy. I had to question why she would wear something with long sleeves despite the June heat, but I figured flying must be cold or something. Her jeans were cuffed at the bottom where they met her black boots.
She was the kind of effortlessly pretty that used to send me into paroxysms of jealousy in my younger days. She walked with a straight back and purposeful stride. It suited her.
I turned as she approached the counter. Up close she was even more intimidating. Her blue eyes flicked from my face to the stupid antennae on my headband to the Parahuman pride pin I had on my lapel. She wore the same symbol, though where mine was the standard black in between the gold circles, hers was filled in with the colors of the bi pride flag.
I hadn't seen one of those before. I would have to see if I could get one for Aisha.
"What can I get you?" I asked in the toneless voice I affected at work.
"Happy Golden Morning to you too," she said sardonically, "I like your headband."
I once again regretted forgetting a hair tie as I rushed out of the apartment before work. I kept the stupid headband in my locker from last Halloween for just this sort of emergency.
In the face of the attention it was getting from the objectively-attractive-even-to-heterosexual-me woman at the counter, it just made me cringe.
"Thanks," I said, annoyed by the suddenly meek tone my voice took on. "I forgot a scrunchie when I left this morning, and I had this leftover from Halloween."
She smiled at me, and I felt better.
"What can I get you," I said again, with more feeling this time.
"Just a drip blonde roast with room for cream and a cup of ice water," she said. It was a surprisingly straightforward order. I finished ringing her up and she paid, then found a seat at the only unoccupied table.
We were absolutely slammed this morning. As a shop staffed entirely with Parahumans, we stayed open on 43rd anniversary of the Golden Morning, when the golden man and the blue woman had announced their intention to gift humanity with the tools to “escape the cycle of destruction that it was trapped in”. They had disappeared, leaving behind a constellation of shooting stars and a hell of a legacy.
It was technically a federal and bank holiday, but by tradition Undersiders Coffee stayed open. It had started under the old owner, and we continued it. I think Brian liked it because as one of the few coffee places near the BBU campus actually open today, we always made a ton in sales.
Thinking about Brian made me scowl at the woman ordering a large, whipped monstrosity and she flinched. I sent the feeling into the swarm of insects I kept on the roof, and they burst into furious activity. It had been three months since I'd thoroughly embarrassed myself by asking him out, then having the most boring dinner date in history. He'd walked me home and said we were “better as friends” and he'd “realized I was like a sister to him”. I still wanted the ground to swallow me every time I thought about it.
And then to top it off my roommate couldn't stop chasing off every other guy I liked. I'd had three more dates since the Brian thing and all three of them had politely broken things off hours after meeting Lisa. She claimed it was because they weren't good enough for me, but I didn't believe her. She had some other game she was playing, and I was getting really tired of it.
Being busy did have one upside. The remainder of my shift passed quickly, if strenuously. When I finally clocked out and grabbed my backpack from my locker, cup of tea in my hand, I was ready to be done with life and crawl into bed. Of course, that wasn't an option. I needed to work on this paper and I didn't particularly want to go all the way home. There was too good a chance Lisa and I would talk ourselves into another night of movies and cuddling on the couch instead of working on my paper.
The only open seat was across from the blonde from earlier. She took up one half of the table, but in recognition of coffeehouse etiquette had left the area opposite her clear.
"Excuse me," I asked her, approaching the table. "Is that spot open?"
She nodded absentmindedly, still focused on whatever she was reading. I dropped my backpack only to realize someone had absconded with the chair. Perfect. I frantically looked around for the culprit or another open chair. Nothing. I was considering going into the back and grabbing a folding chair when the blonde spoke up.
"You can take my chair," she said.
I goggled at her.
"I can fly," she said, "remember?" She smiled slightly at me.
Right. I once again prayed for the floor to swallow me. Excellent work, Taylor.
She slid the chair over to me then sat back in thin air and crossed her legs. Why she had used a chair in the first place was a question for the ages, I guess.
I fished my laptop out of my bag and fired it up, fighting my instinct to just "check PHO real fast." A news conglomerator and message board for Parahumans, the site was surprisingly informative for what amounted to a small and very niche reddit rip-off.
Ten minutes later I was neck deep in my outline. I had done a good job collecting sources, I just needed to make sure the narrative flowed adequately. It was fighting me. The historical sources from pre-Parahuman times were just so vastly different in tone from the more modern ones.
I looked up and an hour had passed. The shop was a little more empty as morning turned into afternoon and people went on with their holidays.
I looked through the crowd with my swarm senses as was my habit. No threats, no one doing anything unsafe, except Aisha who was tossing a knife in the kitchen in a terrifyingly blase fashion. Alec was egging her on.
“KNOCK IT OFF OR ILL TELL BRIAN,” I spelled out in bugs on in front of them. I was careful not to let any of the bugs land on any surface in the kitchen. Aisha blew a raspberry at me and Alec flipped me off. I returned the gesture with an airborne formation of bugs, then sent the swarm back up the exhaust duct whence they'd come, leaving only the small gnats I used to snoop.
"Hey, you okay?" a voice asked. Close by.
The blonde. I'd been focusing too much on my swarm again. Lisa had told me it was a little creepy how still I went when doing that.
"Sorry," I said, "I have a bad habit of getting sucked into my power sometimes. I'm fine."
"Ah," she said. Her voice was rich and deeper than mine. She fixed me with her blue eyes and I felt a shiver run down my back. "Enhanced senses?"
It wasn't really rude to ask what someone else’s powers were, just blunt, at least if you were a fellow parahuman. Unpowered individuals did not get the same privilege. I didn't mind too much but some people didn't like explaining their powers. Lisa said it was too personal, like someone seeing her naked. I felt a slight flush at the idea and sent the feeling into my roof swarm.
"Master power, actually," I said. "Bugs. I can see and hear through them, sort of, and control them. Don't worry, the only bugs in this place are the gnats I use to snoop and the attack bees I keep in my pockets."
She stared at me. I'd thought the joke was funny. More embarrassment joined the last batch and my swarm went apeshit on the roof.
"I'm just kidding. I don't actually have bees in my pockets, I just thought the image was funny. Although I guess I could keep a bunch of bullet ants hidden in my sleeve or something as a self-defense option if I wanted to do something like that and...I'm rambling."
She smiled at me again.
"No no, I'm really interested in power applications, actually," she said. "I've just never met a Master with that level of control before. I'm wondering why you're able to achieve that. Can you have them do multiple things at once?"
"Yeah," I said, "I can multitask pretty much infinitely amongst the bugs in my range. I could pull all the termites out of the building across the street and set each one to eating different benches up and down the street. It doesn’t usually work that way, though. It’s more like an extension of myself? Like I don’t even think about it, its like walking or picking something up."
"Huh," the blonde said. I wasn't sure what it was about her, but her attention was very compelling, an attribute she shared with Lisa. "That must be related to your Agent. It must be handling the multitasking for you. I don't think a human brain could handle that on its own. Do you know its name?"
"Administrator," I said, remembering the vision I'd had back then, trapped in the locker, as the being let itself be known to me. "I get the feeling it's a bit of a snob. I get a sense of contempt when I'm around certain Parahumans."
Behind her eyes I could see this girl furiously considering what I had just told her.
"I need to get back to my essay," I said. "It's due at midnight and I really can't blow my grade in this class."
"Which class?" She asked.
"History 107 with Prof. Gordon," I responded.
She made a face. It mirrored my feelings on the man.
"It's on the 'positive impact that Parahumans have had on the end of conflict in the Global South,'" I said. "It's fucking stupid and completely counter to reality."
"Yeah, he's old-school," the blonde agreed. "I took his ‘Early History of Parahumanity’ course last year. He's been writing since before Golden Morning and he got brought up in the era of American exceptionalism."
"And on top of that he's totally bought into the propaganda around the Protectorate Treaty," I continued, growing heated but simultaneously unable to stop myself. "As if having the world's supposedly neutral peacekeeping force made up almost entirely of Americans does anything but reinforce the global network of imperialist exploitation! The and the non-Americans they do have are Canadian or Western European, for fuck’s sake. God forbid we have representatives from even the other superpowers, much less the 2nd or 3rd world, who have, I might add, 6 times more parahumans than the entire Northern American Hemisphere." I paused to take a deep breath. I realized I had been ranting and slumped into my seat.
"Sorry," I apologized. "My mom was big into politics and my dad works with unions, so I was kinda raised on this stuff. It's near and dear to my heart."
The blonde smiled again, amusement in her eyes. I bristled for a moment before realizing it was sincere rather than condescending.
"I totally get it," she said, "I'm a second generation Parahuman. I've been completely obsessed with how our agents work since I could read. Growing up with two parents, aunt, uncle, cousins, and a sister who all have powers will do that I guess.”
“I’m the only one in my family,” I said. “Your situation sounds overwhelming.”
“It can be,” she said. “I used to imagine we were a superhero team. Going out and fighting other capes in the name of justice. My mom always told me to stop being silly, the liability insurance alone would bankrupt us.”
I smiled. “Your mom sounds like a stick in the mud,” I said, “no offence.”
She let out a chuckle. It was rich and warm, and I found myself wanting to hear it more often.
“None taken,” the blonde said, “seeing as it is completely true. I think she double-triggered and it’s her secondary power presentation.”
I snorted. It was undignified. Three for three on embarrassing myself.
“Listen,” the blonde girl said, “do you want to grab lunch or dinner sometime? Maybe on Friday?”
Awesome, I hadn’t put my foot in my mouth too far. Honestly, making a friend today was going to very much improve the quality of the day so far.
“Sure,” I said, “what’s your number?”
She handed me her phone instead, and I sent myself a text from it.
“It’s a date then,” she said, picking up her bag and turning away.
I started to correct her, tell her I didn’t swing that way, but thank you, blah blah blah. The usual spiel I gave when girls asked me out. It happened surprisingly often. Lots of people in Brockton Bay with broken gaydar I guess.
But then I had another thought. Lisa kept chasing my dates away. I could totally pull one over on her by going out with a girl. She’d never see it coming. Plus, the girl was nice and smart. Spending a meal with her would be fun, and I could always just do the “let’s be friends” speech afterwards. And it wasn’t like I was leading her on with one single date.
“Wait,” I called out, “what’s your name?”
She turned back and it was her turn to look abashed.
“Victoria, Victoria Dallon,” she said. She gave me that radiant smile again. I noticed it didn’t really reach her eyes. There was pain there, I could tell. I should know, my smile doesn’t reach my eyes either, despite my freakishly large mouth.
“See you Friday, Victoria Dallon,” I said.
I barely finished the essay on time that night. I was distracted by thoughts of my new blue-eyed friend, and Lisa’s probable reaction to my news.