Chapter Text
She hadn’t expected anyone to be home when she got back, pencil shavings still stuck in her hair and a black ink stain down her neck and shirt. That had been Madison’s handiwork, during World Issues, when she had pretended to trip and ‘accidentally’ break her pen right when she walked past Taylor’s table. It was a transparent lie, not least because she’d never heard of someone accidentally breaking a ballpoint pen like that, but it was plausible enough for Mr. Gladly to accept it and Madison to get off scot free. Not that Taylor really expected any of the teachers to step in, anymore, but it still hurt a little every time. Not for the first time, she thought about what her mother would have had to say to teachers like that—Annette Rose Hebert had never tolerated bullying or discrimination in her classrooms.
Taylor hopped over the second step on instinct, even though Shawn had fixed it up a few months ago, and quietly let herself inside the house. She had been a little surprised to sense that there was already someone there, when her bugs got in range, and opening the door she could tell who it was. Shawn was sitting at the dining room table, working through some paperwork for his PRT job. He didn’t bring classified documents home, of course, but there was enough mundane paperwork that he could often be found working through whenever he had a spare moment. His work kept somewhat irregular hours, since he sometimes had to put in substantial overtime as a result of villain attacks or other crises, which would usually result in him taking half days to balance out the time.
“Taylor? That you?” he called out, barely looking up.
“Yeah,” she called back, trying to inject some level of cheer into her voice. She must have failed, since he paused and looked up, concern clear in his eyes.
“Woah, kiddo, what happened to you?” he asked, setting his pen down and standing up. He was tall and well muscled, more like an athlete than a bodybuilder. It made sense, given that he used to be a firefighter and still volunteered when he had some free time. Add that on top of him being a pretty good dad and a genuinely kind man, well, she could certainly see what her dad saw in him.
She shrugged a little in response. “A pen broke,” she replied succinctly.
“Did it just break, or did someone break it deliberately?” he asked, brow furrowed.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Does it matter?” she muttered.
“Of course it matters, Taylor,” he said, in a softer voice. “Are they still bullying you?”
Shame burned in her. She was a cape, she had superpowers and she was planning on being a hero, and she couldn’t even deal with some high school bitches from being mean? It made her feel weak and powerless, and she hated that. “They never really stopped,” she said, with a halfhearted shrug. “I mean, they got better for a bit, but then they went right back.”
“When they realized that they weren’t actually getting in trouble,” Shawn guessed, and Taylor gave him a short nod. “Fucking hell. I don’t know why I believed Blackwell that she’d actually do something about it.” He paused, then looked a little sheepish. “Um, please don’t tell Danny I was cursing around you.”
That actually startled a laugh from Taylor, which surprised both of them. “I’ve heard far worse, Shawn.”
“Why don’t you go up and take a shower. I’ll see what I can do about getting the ink out tonight.” He gave her a pat on her ink free shoulder. Physical displays of affection were always a little awkward between them—Taylor wasn’t used to them, and Shawn didn’t really know how to interact with the fifteen year old daughter of his boyfriend—but she appreciated the effort nonetheless. “I’ll talk to Danny tonight, see what we can do about the bullying. Worse comes to worst, I’ve got some strings I might be able to pull to get you a transfer to Claremont or Arcadia.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Taylor quickly said, only to be cut off by Shawn shaking his head.
“I do, Taylor. I know you’re not my kid, but I care about you. And even if I didn’t know you at all, I’d do the same thing for anyone dealing with that.” He gave her a weary smile, but somehow she actually believed he meant what he said.
“Thanks, Shawn,” she said, her voice muted even to her own ears.
“No problem, kiddo,” he replied, his smile not quite masking the concern in his eyes.
She went up to her bedroom, dropping her backpack on the ground and then stripping out of her ink-stained shirt and her jeans, which had been splattered with some black drops as well, although not nearly as bad. Her skin had been stained lightly purple where the ink had soaked through as well, and she knew it would be a while before it washed out.
She took her time in the shower, doing her best to scrub what ink she could off her skin, and making sure she got all the pencil shavings out of her long, wavy hair before she gave it a thorough wash with shampoo and conditioner. The hot water soothed her somewhat, letting her focus on the sensation of near-scalding drops trailing down her skin and pushing the struggles of her day behind her, if just a little.
When she got out of the shower, she pulled a towel around herself and dried her hair for a few minutes with her mom’s hairdryer, and then she shuffled back to her room. Putting on a pair of sweatpants and a clean shirt, she lay on her bed. One hand went down to her waist, grasping at the air—except that when she pulled her hand back, it wasn’t empty, but instead contained a strange orb, around the size of a bouncy ball, with a white bottom and a teal top interlaced with black lines in a rough netting style. Depressing the small button between the two sides, the ball expanded in her hands until it was the size of a softball, and then the top popped open and a beam of red energy emerged, arcing out like bound lightning. It coalesced on top of the bed next to her, gradually taking a specific shape until it faded away, revealing a small yellow creature, about 4 inches tall and covered in bright yellow fur. It looked a little like a spider, although it only had four legs and four eyes, and it blinked up at her as soon as it took form. At the same time, the net ball in her hands—she’d never been particularly creative when it came to names—fizzled out of existence, although she knew she could resummon it at any time when she wanted to return the creature.
He looked up at her with those wide eyes, and in a quiet voice said, “Joltik!” He scurried toward her, before leaping up with surprisingly powerful legs and landing on her stomach, where he snuggled its little body into her chest. Taylor could feel his mind, almost like an extension of herself, and knew that she could impose her will on him just like she could any other bug. Unlike other bugs, though, he didn’t automatically fall entirely under her control, and it took an actual effort to control him completely. That was a bit of a relief, in truth—the Joltik, as he called itself, was far too cute and personable for her to feel comfortable controlling him like that. Plus, when he wanted to snuggle up next to her because she was feeling bad, it was different from her using her powers to give herself a hug. It really was what the little guy wanted to do, and she could feel the love and care he had for her, a love she tried to return to the best of her abilities.
She could tell that the little guy was feeling a little weak, too, so she nudged his mind toward one of the outlets. For whatever reason, Joltik needed electricity to survive, getting it either from static electricity or harvesting it directly from outlets. As far as she’d been able to tell, he didn’t seem to be more of a drain than any other appliance, so she wasn’t that concerned about someone noticing.
When he was done charging up, a task which only took him a couple minutes with the current running through the walls, he skittered back over to her and leapt up onto the bed again, nudging at Taylor’s hand until she began to pet his little head. He was so small, and yet she knew he was far more durable than Taylor herself—and that was before she factored in the he had his own powers.
“You and me, little guy,” she said, quietly. “As soon as I’ve got a costume, we’re gonna go out there and start being real heroes.”
“Jol-joltik!” he cried out, in that quiet and high pitched voice, but she could feel his agreement in her mind.
~*~
When she’d first realized that she had a power—after she’d recovered from the three days spent in a psychiatric ward dealing with the nearly insensate state that her power had put her in—Taylor had been disappointed, to say the least. As far as consolation prizes went, powers were usually poor ones, but if she’d been able to fly or shoot lasers or something it would be something, at least. But no, she had been given bug control.
As far as she could tell, she was capable of controlling arthropods within around a fifty feet radius–the exact radius varied a little, for reasons she couldn’t figure out. That was large enough for her to cover part of the hospital, and when she got home she had control over all the insects and spiders in her house and backyard, plus most of the property of her direct neighbors, but it was still far smaller than she’d like. If she wanted to be a hero—and a large part of her still desperately wanted that—then that range would mean she’d have to get uncomfortably close to criminals or villains before she could actually engage them. On top of that, her range dictated how many bugs she could actually draw on in an emergency, and although there were far more in a fifty foot radius than she would have been comfortable with before she got her powers, it still took time to build up a proper swarm.
And yet, Taylor had gradually come to realize that there was another aspect to her power—some kind of charge, it felt like, a sensation that grew in her chest like a warmth that didn’t feel like heat at all, that was just the closest term she could find to describe it.
She’d been unable to figure out what the charge actually did until it built up enough, and then it was like she was just running on instinct. Taylor had reached out into the bugs she controlled and found a small jumping spider that had made it’s home in the basement. She wasn’t sure why she had picked that one specifically, other than it just felt right, but she had commanded the little guy to walk over to the basement stairs where she had gone over and picked it up in her hands. As soon as she did, it was like the charge inside her was water that had been building behind a great damn, and now a small channel had finally been unblocked. The energy had burst from her body, flowing through her hands and into the tiny jumping spider, and soon it had begun to grow a white color and change shape. When the white energy faded away, the jumping spider had turned into the little Joltik instead.
Taylor had felt drained, in a way, the entire charge that she now realized had been developing since she had first woken up in the hospital depleted, although she also knew that it would gradually come back. But having Joltik with her was wonderful, and discovering that the small creature actually had powers was incredible. They weren’t incredibly strong, not at first, but it could lash out with its front claws in a strike strong enough to tear through wood and leave scratches on metal, and it was also able to shoot a burst of electrified webbing from its mouth (she didn’t know why that was where it seemed to generate its webbing) that shocked anything it touched and slowed them down.
While she was practicing with Joltik’s abilities, she’d also realized that she could use the charge she was building up to ‘power up’ Joltik, for lack of a better word. He would get stronger, faster, and more durable every time she poured a day’s worth of accumulated ‘charge’ into him. It even seemed to help him develop new abilities or attacks—a week’s worth of power had seen him first learn how to attack with a devastating bite attack, and then learn how to shoot string more precisely without an electric charge, but which subsequently was more effective at slowing down a target.
Her practice with Joltik did mean that she wasn’t able to accumulate enough charge to transform another bug into one of these little creatures—she’d been calling him a pocket monster in her head, since he was small enough to fit in her pocket, even though she felt a little bad for using the word ‘monster’ to describe her cuddly friend—but that was fine, for now. Joltik excelled at capturing and disabling opponents, and against non-capes she figured that it made more sense to keep powering him up and getting his electroweb strong enough to capture and disable people in one shot.
Still, she had her eyes on a few other insects, especially since she had a hunch that the rarer the bug she used for her power, the stronger the resulting pocket monster would be. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was enough that she’d started to scout the surrounding area and especially local pet shops for interesting subjects.
Of course, Taylor had thought about joining the Wards, but between the way her power could easily look like a biotinker’s creation and her own hang-ups with teenagers and authority, well. She figured that it wouldn’t hurt to make a name for herself before she joined up.
Joltik might not be able to compete with the real heavy hitters of the bay right now, but she knew that with time, with enough charges, she could turn him into a real threat. Her power had seemed comically weak at first, but now Taylor wouldn’t give it up for anything, even Alexandria or Eidolon’s own abilities. It gave her a friend, after all. She knew that with patience and training, together with Joltik and whatever other pocket monsters she created—her own personal hero team, so to say—she could become a true hero one day, on the same level as Armsmaster or Miss Militia or Dauntless.