Skein [Worm Altpower/AU]

[The Halfa Wannabe]

Huh...all she has to do is change a node on a Web Nexus.

And instantly she Valefor's anyone who has ever spoken to anyone else in that Nexus.

Thats pretty fucking terrifying.


Because at this point its obvious she can alter word associations with a bit of effort.

Click to shrink...

What do you mean by web nexus?

 

[Spiny]

V.
Taylor opened her mouth, then closed it, completely at a loss for what to say. Hi, I'm Taylor, I've been stalking you for the past forty-five minutes because the inside of your brain looks weird? That would go over well.

The blonde, Lisa, walked closer, her smile slowly curling into a smirk. "So what's up?" She shifted back and forth on the balls of her feet, examining—no, scrutinizing Taylor, like she was studying the grain of a piece of wood. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

"I, uh..." Taylor muttered lamely, staring into the space behind Lisa's head. Almost unconsciously, she'd opened up her Web, and her eyebrows arched as she realized it was erupting with light again. Pulling closer, she felt the same rapid-fire blasts of meaning and potential popping in and out of the girl's consciousness, as fast as she could track them. Had she caused that, somehow? Focusing, she dove into the lexical fireworks display and tried to follow one of the chains, tracing the links as they sprung to life and died milliseconds later:

Girl→Bus→Follow→Track⦚⦚→Follow→Gang→Hunt⦚⦚Follow→Know⦚⦚Follow→See→Power→Parahuman→Curiosity...

Taylor's heart pounded in her chest. This girl had to be a parahuman—she was drawing links and conclusions from thin fucking air, throwing out the ones that didn't flow until the only thing that remained was the truth. She grit her teeth, trying to follow the newest chain even as she pulled away to another section of the Web, handling both at once in different mental frames. Lisa continued to stare at her intently, deep in concentration.

Parahuman→Breaker⦚⦚Parahuman→Thinker|Master|Stranger→Eyes→Contact⦚⦚Eyes→Mind→Brain...

Taylor's shoulders tensed, and she pushed further, trying desperately to keep up with the rapidly-expanding Webs-within-Webs as she yanked in nearly as much information as the blonde was putting out.

Parahuman→Cape→Name | Tattletale→...

Eyes→Mind→Brain→Focus→Change|Sense|Read→Range→Influence→Sphere⦚⦚Influence→Limit...

Tattletale? Taylor blinked, barely noticing the beads of sweat forming on her brow.

Limit→Mine→Overload→Process→Headache→Migraine...

Limit→Tense→Push→Blackout⦚⦚Push→Stress→Overextend→New→Inexperienced→Trigger→Months⦚⦚Trigger→Days⦚⦚Trigger→Weeks...

A vein in Lisa's temple began to pulse.

Trigger→Years→Death→Cry→Sleep→Dream...

Weeks→Two⦚⦚Weeks→Three⦚⦚Weeks→Four→Happy→Explore→Learn→Study→Me→Scan→Mind→Now—

"Oh my God, enough!" There was a loud SMACK as Lisa brought her hands together, jolting Taylor out of her node-riding trance. The other girl's face was slightly flushed, like she'd just run a long way, and her smirk had been replaced by a sort of grimace. "We can stand here playing I-know-she-knows-I-know until we both fucking pass out, or we can, you know, talk. Like normal human beings." She strode forward, the smile sliding back like it had never left, and stuck out a hand. "So. I'm Lisa. But you know that already." She laughed a little. "Who're you?" Taylor stepped back a little, swaying on her feet. Her head suddenly felt crushingly heavy and woozily light, all at once, laid on top of a timpani-pounding throb in her head. It was a struggle just to stand, never mind speak. Lisa watched her with those raking eyes, her smile flashing just a bit more tooth.

"Jeez, you've got it bad, huh?" she said airily, pacing a slow circle around Taylor. "Information overload's a bitch. You'll get over it. I did. But okay, let's try a new question. Why were you following me? I mean, I have a hunch, and it's right, but I wanna hear it from you first." "I...you're a parahuman," Taylor replied dumbly, unsure of what else to say. The headache wasn't helping.

Lisa threw back her head and laughed. "Gold star!" It wasn't quite mocking—not like Emma's or Madison's—but it was close enough to set Taylor's teeth on edge. "And so are you. High schooler at... bullied a bunch, know your way around here, probably not Arcadia, clothes like that, not Immaculata—Winslow, right? Triggered pretty recently, still getting used to your power, so you ditch school to head downtown and spy on people. People like me. Because I'm a parahuman." There it was again, that almost-teasing tone.

"Sorry," Taylor muttered back, not sounding sorry at all. Her head was slowly starting to clear, the painful fog lifting, and as it did she felt the all-too-familiar rush of resentment take its place. Resentment, and apprehension. She'd expected a Thinker, sure, but not one this... invasive. Pretty Web or not, having her mind picked at wasn't something she wanted to deal with at the moment. Now you know how they feel, a nasty little voice in her head needled at her. You should get used to it.

"I'll, uh. I'll get going." She turned away, walking towards where the bus had dropped her off—there was a stop on the other side of the street that went back, right?—before stopping short as Lisa put a hand on her shoulder, tutting.

"Psh, why? We're just getting to know each other." Another laugh. "I mean, that's why you trailed me, right? You weren't looking for parahumans. You're a Thinker. You want connections. Conclusions. Datapoints. And I was a spike on the graph." She paused, somehow managing to look even more smug. "Must've been a pretty big one, for you to follow me all the way down to the Docks. That or bad decision-making."

"It wasn't..." Taylor let herself trail off with a heavy sigh. Don't take the bait. "Whatever. How do you—"

"Know all this stuff?" Lisa cut in, not noticing (or at least pretending not to notice) Taylor's scowl as she did. "You mean you can't guess?" The smirk was a practically a physical force, drawing all of Taylor's attention towards it and making something dark and bristly bubble rise up in her gut. She glared at it, shoulders tense, even as she tried to focus on the question. Not that it mattered, really—the second she opened her mouth she was sure Lisa would jab in again and—

"I read minds."

Wow. Not even two seconds.

"You what? What do—"

"I see?" Lisa had gone back to circling, kicking loose chunks of sidewalk so they pinged off the nearby buildings and chain-link fences. "Everything. Surface thoughts, memories, emotions— like an open book. But don't worry." She flashed Taylor an exaggerated wink, tapping her temple. "All those little secrets are safe in here. Swear to God."

"Okay," Taylor muttered, equal parts annoyed and defeated. "Can—"

"Sure, you can go," Lisa waved a hand dismissively. "Not like I can stop you. And I get it! Places to be, buses to catch, people to stalk. I mean, I was on my way to my own appointment before I stopped to chat with you—you should be flattered, by the way."

"You—" Taylor could feel her face reddening.

"Ah!" the blonde chirped, snapping her hand shut in a 'shh' gesture. "Whatever that was, it wasn't flattery... Oh! Before I get going. You have a cape name yet?"

"I—"

"Don't, yeah." Lisa shrugged, her voice airy. "Well, you're pretty quiet. Maybe... Whisper? Murmur? Something like that." She did a neat about-face and began to walk away from the bus stop. "I'll see you around!"

Parahuman→Cape→Name...

"Yeah," Taylor called back, her jaw tightening. "See you around, Tattletale."

There was an audible crunch of gravel as Lisa stopped dead. Taylor was already walking the other way, but she couldn't resist a quick glance over her shoulder, before blinking in surprise as their eyes met. The blonde's gaze was razor-blade-bright, intense, piercing, utterly mismatched with her earlier carefree demeanor. That was what she'd been seeing, firing off inside her Web— that glitter of intelligence, sharp and fine as a needletip. It had been there all along, but now she'd coaxed it out. Put her spines up. It felt fucking good.

Taylor smiled, blood humming in her ears, and Lisa smiled back. Hers showed a flash of canine. "Yeah," she said softly, not breaking eye contact. "You'll see me."

A second passed. Two. Three. Then Lisa spun abruptly and walked away, going just a little bit faster this time. Her Web left with her— and it was flaring, now, so bright it was almost hard to parse, hundreds of nodes bursting outwards like a supernova on fast-forward. Taylor probed at a few, getting as much as they could before they vanished beneath the chaos:

Mind→Brain→Read→How—

Check→Cue→Mirror→Copy→Trump→How—

Name→Me→Mine→How...

She was still smiling as she crossed the street.

 

[The Halfa Wannabe]

Oh yeah. The "mind reader" gets her mind read. Nice.

 

[Galeiam]

It's always so damn satisfying when someone shuts her the hell up.

 

[ScreamingMorgasm]

Your characterisation of Lisa is great, by the way. Just want to acknowledge how well you got her to play 'so smug I deserve a punching' without being too unrealistic. The Thinker-off was great too, I quite like the idea that whenever they meet eyes it becomes a battle of migraine attrition, although that wouldn't match the tone so far.

→Power→Parahuman→Curiosity

Click to shrink...

I'm fairly sure the second 'u' is only in the adjective, unless this is a regional thing?

 

[Spiny]

I'm fairly sure the second 'u' is only in the adjective, unless this is a regional thing?

Click to shrink...

Not a regional thing, a 'I finished editing this at 3am' thing. Thanks for the corrections and the praise.

 

[The Halfa Wannabe]

The Thinker-off was great too,

Click to shrink...

Maybe that's what they mean in canon when they say some thinker powers interfere with each other.

 

[Spiny]

VI.
The busride back from the Docks passed in skips and starts of disjointed thought. Taylor's mind bounced from Lisa to Emma to the memory of her swapping nodes and back and forth and back... she could almost feel another headache coming on. Just a regular headache, not the kind that felt like she was about to drop unconscious. It was a welcome change.

She put her fingers to her temples, pushing slow, steady circles as she replayed the end of the conversation in her head. Lisa had been surprised, but there was more too it than that. Something deeper. The way she'd glared, with that predatory smile... in that moment, Taylor had gone from being a plaything to a threat. She wasn't sure which one she disliked more. At least Lisa might take her seriously, if they saw each other again. Maybe a little too seriously. If she really could read minds—and it definitely seemed that way—Taylor wasn't looking forward to it. Sure, they weren't technically enemies, but they sure as hell weren't friends, and if there was one thing she didn't need it was yet another vindictive teenage girl trying to actively ruin her life. It hadn't been a total loss, at least—she'd manage to learn something, no thanks to Lisa and her constant interruptions. Something she could use.

Taylor leaned back against the crappy plastic seat and pulled open a few of the other passengers' Webs. Countless nodes shimmered before her, each one bristling with activity. She focused, picking out the related pairs, and carefully began to tug, coaxing them across the strands of meaning until they were fully shifted over. She tried swapping colors, places, names, things— anything and everything she could, though she made sure to change them back afterward. Every time a node snapped into place, it felt a little bit easier, a little more natural. It was exhilarating and terrifying.
Some swaps, she quickly realized, were much harder than others. Things within the same mental cluster were the easiest—one color to another, or 'aunt' to 'uncle'. The further away each node was, and the more subshoots it had, the harder she had to push her changes through—but it was still doable. That was the creepy part. Swapping 'enemy' with 'love' had taken a good three or four minutes of concentration and trying not to stare at the fratty-looking teenager whose Web she was manipulating, but she'd done it...

And then promptly undone it, ping-ponging the nodes back into their rightful place with a rush of sickening guilt. Taylor wasn't sure how deep her new connections went—was she just changing the word, or the concept itself?—but using nodes like that wasn't the way to find out, even if she had a suspicion it was only the former. Emotions and memories weren't words, after all. They were tied together, sometimes so closely you could barely pry them apart, but they weren't the same, and she didn't know how to get one from the other. Sometimes, when she shifted particularly heavy nodes, she felt a faint subconscious ripple of feeling, little fleeting shards of happy-angry-sad, but that was all they were. Ripples. If there was something more there, something deeper, she didn't know what it was or how to use it. Another question to add to the ever-growing list.
The bus's brakes screeched as it pulled up to a light, making Taylor start. She glanced out the window, a frown slowly forming as she failed to recognize anything outside. She'd been riding for, what, 45 minutes now? Surely they had to be getting close— no, wait. There was the overpass, the intersection, the signs... she'd been so focused on her practice that she'd missed her stop. Pretty spectacularly, too; it was at least a good four miles back to her neighborhood.

Taylor pulled the stop cord, standing up and walking towards the door almost before the bus had stopped moving. She was eager to get home, but wasn't too upset about the walk—it would give her more time to practice.

---

It was another hour and a half before Taylor turned onto her street, feet aching slightly in her sneakers. There was a low roar up ahead; her neighbor, a grey-haired, sallow-faced man whose name she didn't know, was mowing his lawn. She gave him a little wave as she walked by, doing her best to avoid the occasional sprays of grass clippings, and he nodded back. In the time the exchange had taken, she'd rearranged all his color-words in a single coordinated tug, only to snap them back to normal half a second later. Fast, fluid, effortless. It was so easy. Moving more distinct nodes was still tricky—she'd made far, far less progress on that front—but rearranging clusters was something she barely had to think about, though it still gave her headaches if she tried to shift too many at once. The odd ripples had been getting stronger, too, the more ambitious with her shifts she got—or maybe she was just better at noticing? Either way, that particular mystery would have to wait. She had plenty to focus on already.

The house was quiet, still, and annoyingly empty of Webs. It was only 4:30; Dad wouldn't be home for another few hours. She could use the time to finish up her assignments—some report for World Issues and a few chunks of busywork—but that wasn't going to happen. Not now, with a hundred what-ifs and fragments of possibility tangled up in her head. She almost wished she'd stayed downtown longer, but now that she was here...

Hm.

Lisa had been kind of a bitch, but she'd had a point. If she was going to develop her power, learn to actually apply it, she needed a name. well, she needed a lot more than that. The name was just a capstone, a neat bundle of what she stood for as a cape. Whatever that was. Even if she wasn't going to join the Wards, or a gang—and at the moment, she had zero plans of doing either— she still needed an identity. Something she could point to when talking to other capes. Something to be known for... if she even wanted to be known.

Did she?

Taylor lay back on her bed, kicking off her shoes. What did she want to do? Her power was useful, yeah. Insanely useful, in the right circumstances. But it wasn't useful like Alexandria, or Armsmaster, or Legend. She wasn't going to be fighting bad guys. Not directly, at least. But she could still probably do some good in the background, as long as she kept a low profile...

If you aren't press-ganged into the Protectorate first.

Taylor swallowed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a nasty, intrusive thought, crawling up from some dark crevasse of doubt and self-loathing, but she couldn't just push it away. Her power was—it was wonderful, and beautiful, and let her see and feel things no one else could—but it was also fucking scary. It scared her sometimes, just how fast she could work her way through someone's Web, leaving a trail of subtle tweaks and changes in her wake. Even if she kept everything above the line, dedicated her life to helping Brockton Bay, it wouldn't matter. People valued their minds, their words, their connections. She'd be tolerated at best, a pariah at worst...

Yeah. Going public, PRT or otherwise, was out of the question. But a name was still a good start.

Leaning halfway off her bed, Taylor fished out a notebook and a pen from the depths of her backpack, flipping open a fresh page. She started writing names as they came to her, one after another, filling up the lines in a stream-of-consciousness rush. Web. Too straightforward, utilitarian. Network. The same. Fiber. Didn't really sound like a hero name. Morpheme. It was a nice word, one she liked, but it was a mouthful. Weaver?

She paused, tapping her pen against the page. That one was good, but it was a little on-the-nose. Crossing it out with the rest, she kept going: Author. Scribe. Wordsmith. None of those were very intimidating, and they didn't really describe what she did anyway. Lexis. Syntax Lemma. Lemma was another good one—a word in someone's head, chosen to be spoken but not actually said. It didn't really feel like a cape name, but it fit so well...

Taylor bit her lip, mentally sounding it out, then scribbled her pen across the word until it was an unrecognizable mass of ink.

Pattern. Method. Sequence. Strand. Array. Mesh. Nexus. Paradigm... Those last two weren't bad. They both sort of described her power, in a way just vague enough to keep things ambiguous. That was part of the point, of course—'Tattletale' wasn't exactly specific either, even if Lisa pretty much wore her Thinker status on her sleeve. But which one? Paradigm had that nice linguistic implication, but it could also mean an example, or a copy. Not quite what she was going for. Nexus was a perfect match for her power, but it sounded a little self-aggrandizing, which was the last thing she wanted. It was definitely between those two, though. The realization gave her a quiet thrill. She was going to be a cape.

"Taylor?"

Dad's voice, from downstairs. Was he home early? Taylor frowned, looking at her bedside clock, her eyebrows arching in surprise as she saw the time. It was 6:30. She'd been absorbed in her superhero fantasies for almost two hours straight, and still had most of a World Issues essay and a math packet to do. With a heavy sigh, she forced herself up from her bed, pulling off her hoodie and making her way downstairs. The name would have to wait.

Danny Hebert was already in the kitchen, busy arranging pans on the stove and looking slightly more worn than usual. "Hey, Dad," Taylor greeted him, doing her best to sound upbeat. "How was your day?"

He didn't respond for a few seconds, looking down fiddling with the pilot light. There was a bag of groceries on the floor; Taylor hefted it onto the counter and began to put it away, using the crinkle of the paper to avoid the silence. "The usual," Dad finally said with a shrug. "You know how it is. What about you? School going okay?" She'd expected the deflection—it was what usually happened when she tried to prod him about how things were going—but it still annoyed her, just a little. It was so much worse now, too, when she had the answers literally right in front of her, floating through her head like tiny, tantalizing sparks. She could feel them there, quivering in anticipation, every node begging to be caressed, examined, freed, and she just wanted to help...

No, Taylor thought, pushing a bag of rice cakes into the pantry a bit harder than was necessary. She'd set limits for a reason. "Uh, yeah," she responded, grabbing a box of cereal next. "Pretty good." It wasn't a total lie—being surrounded by Webs for hours on end had made Winslow infinitely more bearable, even her social life was as bleak as ever. "Got a lot of homework, though."

"Don't stay up too late," Danny said, nodding absently as he cut open a tray of frozen meat. "Burgers sound good? They should take about half an hour."

"Yeah," she said, putting on a smile. "You want help?"

He shook his head. "I can handle two burgers. Taylor. You should get started on your work."

"Yeah." She retreated back upstairs, flopping right back down onto her bed and opening up the notebook. She'd have plenty of time for homework later tonight. This was more important. Probably.

Dinner was brief, quiet, and uneventful. Taylor ate quickly, doing her best to keep up something resembling a conversation while keeping her thoughts far, far away from her dad's Web. The moment she'd finished and cleaned up, she stood and left, hastily citing something about the essay. Dad just nodded, and she had to swallow down a hot bubble of guilt as she climbed the stairs. She didn't want to be distant, but if she gave in and started looking, she'd feel even worse. It was better this way, at least for now, until she got a better handle on her power. The novelty of Webs would wear off eventually, she was sure, and once it had she'd be able to reign herself in.

Right? Right.

---

The homework had taken a lot longer than it should have. Taylor was normally pretty focused when she set her mind to something, but tonight, with so many things clamoring for recognition in her head, it pretty much but impossible. Every time she felt herself hitting a groove, she'd get distracted by some niggling thought—a name idea, a memory of Emma, a worry about Tattletale—and would have to force herself back on track. The essay was especially bad; she'd been so absorbed in picking apart her classmates' vocabularies that she'd realized, all too late, she had next to zero idea of the economics concepts they were supposed to be writing about. But she'd pushed through, even hitting a half-page over the minimum, and it was only—

Taylor glanced at the clock again. 11:30. She should've been asleep a while ago, and she still hadn't decided on a name. As long as she was up, a few more minutes couldn't hurt. Turning back to her computer, she opened up the browser and began scrolling absently through the front pages of the international news sites she'd bookmarked. Swarms of words clamored for her attention, arranged in perfect rows and columns and dense with information, and she drank them in, feeling the familiar tingle in the back of her scalp... and then sighed, closing the tabs. One almost-all-nighter in a week was enough. Better to quit while she was only a little behind.

On a whim, she opened up the browser again and logged into her email, promising herself it would be the last thing she checked before she slept. It was more a habit at this point, anyway— the only things it got anymore were spam, college offers, and the occasional news or PHO notification, but—

Taylor frowned, her eyebrows pushing together as her inbox loaded. Two unread messages. One was yet another flyer from Brockton University, which she trashed immediately, but the other was a little more interesting: sent 5 minutes ago, from 'z3128030@5minmail.com'. No subject. She clicked on it, fully expecting an ad for 'real cape powers' or God knew what else in horribly mangled English, but as she scrolled to the body, she realized she'd been half-right: the message was mangled, but it wasn't in English, or even anything close. The single string of characters was a tortured slurry of words from four or five different languages—Taylor recognized Japanese, Russian, French, and something that was probably Bulgarian, all phrased like they'd been run through the quickest online translator possible and strung together in a vaguely-coherent sentence that she had to reread four or five times to parse:

Nice trick. We should meet. Saturday at noon, city coffee shop. You know which. Always wanted to learn Spanish.
-L

Taylor let out a quiet but audible groan, closing the browser and jabbing at the computer's power button. Whatever she wanted to learn, it sure as hell wasn't Spanish.

 

[Biigoh]

Lisa knows....

 

[RoninSword]

As someone who doesn't speak a second language fluidly, I can still say that anyone who speaks a language fluidly likely finds Tattletales use of online translators to be cringe worthy.

 

[Galeiam]

The fuck does she know her email address?

 

[ScreamingMorgasm]

The fuck does she know her email address?

Click to shrink...

This is Tattletale. Probably saw a missing thread on her left sock and extrapolated from there.

 

[Subrosian Smithy]

The fuck does she know her email address?

Click to shrink...

Lisa knows what school Taylor goes to and has seen her face:

Lisa threw back her head and laughed. "Gold star!" It wasn't quite mocking—not like Emma's or Madison's—but it was close enough to set Taylor's teeth on edge. "And so are you. High schooler at... bullied a bunch, know your way around here, probably not Arcadia, clothes like that, not Immaculata—Winslow, right? Triggered pretty recently, still getting used to your power, so you ditch school to head downtown and spy on people. People like me. Because I'm a parahuman." There it was again, that almost-teasing tone.

Click to shrink...

From there, it's easy to track Taylor down, get more information about her, learn about Taylor's sudden success in Spanish class, even. TT has great success with guessing arbitrary random number passwords in canon, I'm not surprised she can figure out something as not-arbitrary as an email address.

 

[The Halfa Wannabe]

Right? Right

Click to shrink...

Out of curiosity how do you guys read this? Whenever I run into this without a qualifier like "she said angrily" my default is reading it as mild panic. How about you?

 

[wargonzola]

Out of curiosity how do you guys read this? Whenever I run into this without a qualifier like "she said angrily" my default is reading it as mild panic. How about you?

Click to shrink...

I parse it as mildly anxious with a touch of denial, though context can change that.

 

[Spiny]

Interlude: Lisa

How.

It didn't feel like a question at this point—more like an imperative. That made no sense, Lisa realized, doing a neat heel-turn on the carpet for what was easily the twentieth time that hour, but not a lot made sense right now. It fit, at least. She'd most of the day reliving what had happened at that bus stop, wringing the memories dry over and over, trying to squeeze out every last tiny drop of information. It had helped, but not enough. There were too many gaps, too many questions, not enough pins in her mental corkboard. All this agonizing, all this frustration, and she was still just as far from finding out who the fuck this girl was as she'd been a few hours ago, despite the the best efforts of her power and her brain combined...

And she hated it. Hated it enough to make her feel sick.

It wasn't even the inconvenience, the annoyance of yet another lead falling through. Sure, moving forward with her grand designs would be awesome, but it wasn't about that. It hadn't been since the moment she'd heard that girl say her cape name. She'd made it intimate, then, whether she knew it or not. Personal. In that instant, it had gone from a chance interaction to something Lisa could work for, focus on—maybe even savor, weird as it sounded. It wasn't often you met someone who cheated just as well as you did, and infuriating as it was, there was also something to admire, something to enjoy. She was glad for that; it might've been the only thing keeping her sane.

Lisa paused for a moment, standing stock-still in the middle of her apartment and massaging her forehead. She'd been doing her best to keep power usage to a minimum—the wicked migraine she'd gotten about an hour ago still hadn't quite faded—but the temptation was there, and it was strong. A few fragments of data floated through her head, arranging themselves in innumerable patterns, just barely out of reach. Normally, something like that would be enough to kickstart another burst of leads, sending her into a frenzy of potential outcomes until something stuck... but this time there just wasn't enough. She'd gotten a lot from the conversation—that was kind of her thing, after all—but none of it was the questions she needed answering. What could this girl do? Did she know what she could do? If she was anything like Lisa—the thought came to her suddenly, emerging from the haze of probabilities—she was holding twice as many cards as she seemed to and bluffing even more. The thought was exhilarating, energizing, and, yeah, maybe a little scary. But only a little. She was Tattletale. She'd handled worse before.

...Had she?

With another sudden heel-turn, Lisa resumed her pacing. Sure, she'd outsmarted plenty of people more powerful than some sixteen-year-old girl... But power was relative, wasn't it? That was the whole point. Put a Thinker one-on-one with Alexandria and it wouldn't even be a fight, but that kind of strength—that big dumb shiny outward-facing strength that caught the normals' eyes and made them ooh and aah—that wasn't what was scary. Not to Tattletale, or anyone with a brain. It was useful, yeah, and very lethal if applied right, but so was a bat or a gun. There wasn't much of a difference, really, they were both so straightforward. What you saw was what you got. The really terrifying shit was subtle and insidious, creeping around the edges of your awareness until it was way past too late. Sure, she had a lot more forewarning for that than pretty much anyone else, but it didn't matter. The potential, the concept of whatever threat that dorky-looking chick could pose—it was too much for Lisa to ignore. Not for the city's sake—let the PRT worry about that—but for hers. Every little problem that bus-stop meeting had brought up, every untraced thread, they fucking stuck inside her,like keening burrs inside her head. Every time she tried to compartmentalize, moved to do something else, to focus on it later, she'd get distracted by some little unresolved lead or irritating scratch at her ego. This wasn't a problem she could shove off to the side for later, something she could run in the background. There was too much promise in it for that.

She sighed softly through her nose, sinking down into the apartment's couch and staring out the window. The Brockton skyline wasn't really much of a view, just greyish strip of ocean and a few skyscrapers poking ostentatiously at the sunset-tinted clouds. Lisa thought, not for the first time, that she'd like it a lot more if she could see the horizon, but she knew plenty of people would kill for the view just the same. That only made it worse, really. A power, a penthouse, a cushy life and more money she knew what to do with: all things considered, she had zero to complain about... but it wasn't enough. It had never, ever been enough.

Lisa turned away, looking down at the couch cushions. There was a stray thread in one of them, poking out near the corner. She let it fill her vision, completely occupying her focus as she traced slow, looping patterns along cotton lining. Powers and money and comfort. She wanted them, sure, like every human being on the planet, but they'd all die the second she did. Turn to dust. And then what would be the point? The satisfaction of pulling a fast one on a few bigwig normals? Okay, maybe more than a few, but still. There was nothing to be proud of about pitching 95 in Little League. You might win every time, but you'd still look like a tool. Probably feel like one, too. She sure did.

For the last few months, that feeling had been gnawing at her: the same restless ennui, the inescapable drive for something more. Not raw power—if she wanted that, she'd set herself up as a sockpuppet somewhere. Too easy. The outcome wasn't even important at this point. She realized that now. It was about pushing her limits, how far she could go. Turning the city inside out and upside down and then putting it back right again, just to see if she could. The details weren't worked out yet—still too many unknowns, strings she had yet to tie together—but at the end of it all, one way or another, Brockton Bay would remember her.

Daydreaming about the intricacies could wait, though. For now, she had a lead, the biggest one she'd gotten in weeks. There was something to this, she knew. An opening, a way in—there had to be, there always was. She just had to find it and take it.

Lisa vaulted upwards from the couch, drawing the penthouse's thick curtains against the dying sunlight, and sat down at her computer, all thoughts of the migraine forgotten. With a flicker of keystrokes, she'd opened up four different browser windows, typing nearly as fast as the rapid-fire shotgun-blast ideas could hit her. She was Tattletale, god dammit. Her potential was limited only by her own stamina and the speed of fucking thought, and there was no way in any possible permutation of Hell she was letting some stuttering sophomore pull one over on her that easily. She was going to crack this girl like an egg, until she had every tiny detail exposed and every fleeting motivation under her thumb, or ruin herself trying.

After a second's pause, she opened up another tab, bouncing rapidly through the options before firing off her order: large cheese and a 2-liter of lemon-lime soda. She hadn't eaten pizza in years, didn't even like it very much, but even the two-minute call to the Chinese place a few blocks down would've broken her concentration. It was going to be a long, long night.

She couldn't have been happier.

 

[The Halfa Wannabe]

It hadn't been since the moment she'd heard that girl say her hero name.

Click to shrink...

Did you mean cape name, or is this that heavily AU?

 

[Spiny]

Did you mean cape name, or is this that heavily AU?

Click to shrink...

Oops, fixed.

 

[The Halfa Wannabe]

Oops, fixed.

Click to shrink...

Yay, I was useful. AGAIN! It's been a good week for me.

 

[ScreamingMorgasm]

She'd spent most of the day reliving what had happened at that bus stop,

Click to shrink...

Missed a word, methinks. I like this Lisa, is she doing this in her Undersiders downtime, or was that stuff about taking Brockton all her? You go, Tattletale.

 

[Ack]

Tattletale has been trolled. And she still doesn't know just how badly.

 

[Spiny]

VII.

Taylor drummed her fingers absently against the glossy fake-wood of the desk, looking slowly around the room and trying to focus. It wasn't easy, with the thousands of twines of words, questions, and other assorted anxieties spinning in her mind, but she needed something to occupy herself. Rosin was up front, talking about some Spanish subject or other, something she'd probably mastered a few weeks ago. No point in sitting and re-absorbing something she could do unconsciously, right? There were better things to do. She wanted to experiment.

With a quiet inhale, Taylor opened her lens to the Webs of her classmates, gliding absentmindedly through them. Ashley, Johanna, Alex… all possible targets, but for this to work, she'd have to talk to them. Not a prospect she relished. There were only a few people in the Spanish room she could hold a conversation with that wouldn't turn into backhanded (or fronthanded) insults, and she didn't really want to use Rosin as her guinea pig. She was too sweet for that. That left the lone upperclassman, a few of the shyer kids… and Greg. Greg, who was also sitting conveniently close to her, staring out the window.

She sighed inwardly. It would work. It would have to.

Focusing her lens, she began to dance across Greg's nodes, staying very pointedly away from anything involving herself. What should she try? Something small, innocuous—but big enough to notice on her end. Trailing along his subshoots, she watched him tap-tap-tap his pencil against the desk until—wait. That was it. She pushed carefully between the nested fibers, pulling out and lighting up two specific nodes.

Pen-> Ink|Write|Fancy|

Pencil-> School|Two|Yellow|

There. Once she had them highlighted, floating in the void of Greg's head, Taylor traced along the tenuous connections between them and prepared to repeat what she'd tried yesterday. It was so simple. Frighteningly simple. The same thing each time. Just push, pull, focus, snap.

In less than a blink, it was done, the nodes for pen and pencil twanging across Greg's Web and settling into their newly-minted positions. His expression didn't change, still alternating between staring at Rosin and gnawing on the edge of his thumb. Taylor felt the now-familiar stab of guilt rise up, but it was duller now, blunted by the thrill of agency. She wasn't really sure if that was a good thing or not, but it she wasn't hurting anyone, right? And she could always undo it.

"So! I'm gonna have you guys break off into pairs and finish this review worksheet, okay? Try to get it done before the end of class, it's your participation points for the day!" Rosin's voice sounded, bright and chirpy, bringing Taylor reluctantly back to the present. She bit down on a sigh. At least she'd have an opportunity to interact with Greg. Better than making one herself. Slowly scooting her desk closer to his, she glanced up at him, trying not to meet his eyes as he gave her a big goofy-looking grin.

"I'll do the first part and then you can do the second part and we can go over it. Okay? Or do you want to do the first part?"

Taylor paused, considering something very different than the order they'd do the worksheet. This was the moment of truth. She could swap the nodes back right now, and nothing would change. It would take less than a second, and then she could move with her day like nothing had happened, keep tinkering in secrecy, changing color-words and stupid tiny inconsequential things…

Or she could try her luck, right here, right now.

What could it hurt?

"Uh," Taylor said eloquently, mind racing. "…nah, that sounds good, I think." She'd already done the meaningful part, for God's sake. Why was this so difficult?

"Okay," replied Greg, nodding in his bobbleheaded way. He immediately started on sheet, furiously scribbling out verb conjugations with an intensity that would've made Taylor roll her eyes if she hadn't been busy wrestling her morals.

A second passed. Then two.

"Hey Greg?"

"Huh?" He looked up from the worksheet and stared at her, uncomfortably intense.

"Can I borrow one of your pencils? I uh, forgot mine."

Greg blinked, eyes widening slightly, and for a heartpiercing moment Taylor thought she'd somehow done something wrong, caused all the delicate framework of his mental dictionary to unravel—but no, it was just Greg being Greg, his Web was fine, and after a second he nodded, leaning a good 45 degrees off his chair to unzip his backpack. Taylor stared at the back of his neck, relieved and uncomfortably tense all at once, until he leaned back up and handed her…

A black ballpoint pen.

"Is this one okay? There's a lot of ink in it still I think."

Taylor just nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She shouldn't have been this surprised, really, but there something about seeing her work in action for the first time, having it reflected in someone's actions, not just their words… it was a little awe-inspiring. She took the pen slowly, practically cradling it in her fingers, and moved to start on her portion of the worksheet.

"Be careful with the pencil," Greg's voice sounded again, and the thrill returned again, Taylor's stomach going all fluttery as she heard her little manufactured sabotage. "It's a nice one, and I don't have very many left with black ink and my dad says if I lose my school supplies I have to buy new ones with my own money so—"

"I'll be careful," she replied absently, focusing on the worksheet. The subjunctive was annoying, if only because she actually had to think about it a bit to remember which cases applied where. The one and only downside of learning language through osmosis. It was a price she was willing to pay.

She finished the assignment quickly—any of her attempts to drag out the process for some more Web-hopping and solitude had been almost immediately met with vocal offers of 'help' from Greg, to the point where, resigned, she'd just done the stupid thing to get him off her back. Then he'd wanted to review, which she'd also obliged, tuning him out like a mosquito and answering only when prompted. Greg was nice enough, but talking with him was like conversational quicksand: the more you struggled to leave, the deeper you got pulled you back in. She'd been on the verge of snapping at him to shut up when the bell had chimed, setting her free. Standing quickly, she hefted her bag bag onto her shoulder, nearly forgetting to give him back his 'pencil'. "Here," she said, staring just long enough to swap the nodes back into their proper places. "Thanks."

Before he could reply, she was power-walking out of the Spanish room into the hall, dodging students, lockers, and the occasional offhanded shove. World Issues wasn't going to be fun—after her sort-of-escape yesterday, Madison would want to up the ante. Taylor wasn't exactly sure what that that meant, either, which made it that much worse: the Trio weren't exactly creative, but they varied their tactics enough that she could never really steel herself against them.

Oh well. Nothing for it.

She made it to Mr. Gladly's room, early as always, doing the usual desk-seat check before she sat down. Clean and clean. Someone had even scribbled over suicio puta, probably whoever sat in her seat in the afternoon. She felt a twinge of resentment at that—she hadn't really cared about the graffiti, and Madison would definitely see it as an act of defiance, regardless if Taylor had done it or not.

"Morning, guys," Gladly said, walking to the front of the room. "I've given it some thought, and I've decided to move the quiz back to Monday. We'll take today to review as a class, all right?"

Pleased murmurs sounded through the room, Taylor's voice not among them. At least it wasn't group work.

---

She almost wished it was group work.

The rubber band tactic from yesterday had made an encore, along with erasers, thumbtacks, and the usual stage-whispered comments from Madison and her cronies about everything from her financial situation to her shaving habits. Taylor tuned them out, as ever, focused on the Words. Fishing yet another piece of elastic out of her collar, she pulled open Madison's Web, entertaining herself by reorganizing the girl's family tree, snap-snap-snap…

She paused, the nodes sparking to a stop as she felt another wave of ripples, the same odd almost-emotions as yesterday. What were they? The more she changed within the Web, the stronger they got, hovering just at the edge of her awareness, tantalizingly close. She delved deeper, dancing across the subshoots' glistering lengths, entertaining herself by trying to swap progressively harder nodes each time. It was tricky, just like it had been on the bus, but she could do it. Again and again, reorganizing the interlocking chains of thought before immediately changing them back. It was relaxing, in an zen sort of way. Freeing. She smiled.

Snap-snap-snap. There went Madison's colors, interlocking with each other in a near-perfect grid. She felt a few swells, but not enough.

Snap-snap-snap. Her family members again, swapping Aunt Jennie and Cousin Leah, Grandpa Allan and Uncle Dan. Bigger ripples this time, spreading across the surface. Taylor caught snatches of association, little wisps of fractured feeling, and felt a tingle of electricity course through her.

There it was again. She was so close.

Snap-snap-snap. Her friends. Real friends, not the clusters of orbiting hangers-on she'd acquired by being cute and popular and viciously spiteful. There weren't many, Taylor noted with satisfaction, but there were enough to make more ripples: split-second interwoven flashes of happiness and nostalgia and laughter, all mixed with little bitter slivers of vengeance and resentment. Madison, it seemed, was not a very nice girl. Taylor didn't need her Web to know that.

Snap-snap-

SMACK.

With a soft yelp, Taylor jerked forward in her seat as two rubber bands snapped against the bare flesh of her neck at once, all her focus and concentration evaporating in an instant at the moment of impact. Mr. Gladly stared at her for a moment, eyebrows raised, then turned back around, continuing to write on the board and ignoring the barely-stifled snickers from around the room.

Coward.

She sunk down in her seat, fuming, trying desperately to snatch back the strands of thought she'd been following even as they slipped away to nothing. She'd been so fucking close, and now it was like she hadn't tried at all. No matter how hard she focused, how deeply she tried to immerse herself in the flickering nexus of points and lines, the ripples remained elusive. Gritting her teeth, she imagined, for a brief, vindictive moment, just diving into Madison's Web and yanking around every node she could, tearing apart the beautifully-aligned rows and restitching everything until it was all a horrible ugly patchwork where nothing made sense. It would be… well, it wouldn't be easy, but she could do it. Probably. She still wasn't entirely sure how deep her power went yet—was she just changing their words, or something more? Could she grow subshoots, or even change them at all?—but it didn't matter, really. She wasn't going break that limit, cross that line, wasn't going to sink down past their level…

Not yet, at least.

---

Taylor walked out of math feeling surprisingly content, considering how the day had started. Everything past lunch (which had been free of incidents, thank God) had sort of blurred together, an indistinct haze of assignments and lectures and half-remembered deadlines. Even the insults from Gladly's class had faded slightly, though a few of them still needled at her. Still, though. It could've been a lot worse, and now the weekend stretched before her, a whole two and a half days to reflect and experiment and figure all this shit out. She was free.

Rounding the corner, she opened her lens, letting the innumerable shining threads crisscross and dance around her, a dense, free-flowing cascade of data—

And stopped dead, almost running facefirst into Sophia, who was standing with her arms folded, smirking. She was flanked, as always, by Madison and Emma, the three of them parting the sluggish tide of students like rocks in a river. The dark-skinned girl shoved Taylor back, making her trip, stumble, almost-fall, and she got to her feet slowly, breathing in and out, bracing herself for the incoming barrage and quietly seething all the while. Her school bus was one of the first to leave. Catching it home like she'd planned was already a lost cause.

"…and in the middle of class, she was like, staring at me. Just ogling. It was kind of cute, honestly. In like, a really pathetic way," Madison said, sweet as antifreeze.

"Oh my God!"


"Fucking gross…"

"Is she gay?"

A small crowd was forming now, a teeming wall of students clustering around, pushing in, grinning and jeering.

"Bet she tried it after she realized none of the guys want to touch her."

"Nobody wants to touch her!"

"Nobody wants to look at her," Emma said, dramatically averting her eyes from Taylor as she spoke. "She just stares with her mouth open. It's like a dead fish." Taylor tightened her jaw self-consciously despite herself, staring at the space under Emma's chin. Just focus on the words. She could take the city bus home. It was fine. It was the weekend. Nothing they said mattered.

Even→her→family→doesn't→love…

That struck a harsh, angry chord. Taylor took a step back, dropping her eyes to the linoleum and shivering with choked-back rage. Fucking fuck. Why couldn't she have been a Brute, or a Shaker, someone who could just pick them all up and throw them through wall or something? She wouldn't do that, she knew, even if she could, but it she fucking wanted to, God damn. She could feel the anger in her veins, bubbling up like molten tar, searing away her restraint and her reason and everything else—

Focus on the words.

Stupid→ugly→whore…

Taylor blinked, and the anger condensed, folding down to a single blazing point, white-hot and savagely clear. The other kids pressed inward, and she glanced up, watching Emma's mouth as if in slow motion, studying each movement of her lips, the way they twisted and curled and popped as they formed the syllables, the florid fractal-branches of her Web lighting up in time…

She'd→sleep→with→… Flash-flash-flash. The nodes sparked to life, the chain of the sentence forging itself piece by glowing piece; it was still uncomfortably close to the horrible tumor that was her own node, but Taylor could still appreciate the beauty, as much as she hated it…

→anyone→→Seriously→ Flash-flash. Long sibilant on the second word, nonstandard intonation, stressed first syllable. Emphasis. Taylor studied the node, picking it apart, gave it the slightest tug to see what pulled the most, waiting, her mind on fire, coiled and ready to strike…

What→… Flash.

A→… Flash.

And as the final word began to glow, its glittering lemma suspended in Emma's brain, Taylor reached out and seized it and pulled, diving through the tangle of relation and slamming a new node down in its place.

"What a slu-stu-stinky face!" Emma stammered, her sneer suddenly faltering. She paused, eyes narrowed, then forged onward obviously: "She's so desperate. Fucking disgusting."

The hallway was suddenly very, very quiet.

"…What?" Emma broke the silence, frown returning in full force. "What?" Madison, Sophia, the press of unidentifiable faces surrounding them—they were all staring, all in varying degrees of disbelief. Taylor couldn't help but do the same. The anger had sort of evaporated now, replaced by an odd, balloon-like feeling in her stomach, and she felt the beginning of a smile on her lips, faint and ghostly.

"Stinky face? Fucking seriously?" One of the bigger juniors, some meathead-looking dude—Brett? Was that his name?—was staring at Emma, half-laughing already. Some of the other upperclassman joined in, and Emma spun around towards them, her face a rapidly-shifting mask of insecurity, confusion, and rage.

"What—fucking—what did I say? What the fuck?" Her voice still had that mean biting edge to it, but it was tinged with panic now. "Why are you defending her?" As she jabbed a finger at Taylor, Emma's voice rose to a grating shriek—but Taylor was already gone, shoving through the weakest link of the crowd and booking it towards the front doors, clutching her backpack to her chest. As fun as it would've been to stay and watch the fireworks, she'd deflected their attention, given herself an out. It would be stupid not to take it.
She pushed out through Winslow's side doors, throwing a halfhearted glance over her shoulder towards the loading lot, just in time to see her bus slowly pull out towards the road a good two hundred feet away. Downtown it was. Well, not necessarily— she could just take the other bus and transfer, but there wouldn't be any harm in heading out there again. As long as she stayed far away from the Docks.

Crossing the street at a jog, Taylor slowed to a stop at the now-familiar sign, panting slightly. Her next ride downtown came in—she pulled out her phone, checked the time—four minutes. Perfect. Turning her face towards the bright fall sun, she closed her eyes, basking in her victory. Knowing the Trio, they'd make her pay for it, and dearly—but that was later. There was a whole weekend of possibilities between now and then, and the feeling of raw, visceral satisfaction she'd had seeing panicky look on Emma's face had made it more than worth it. Way, way more. She'd have to do some more experimenting later, too, see just how fast she actually could change people's nodes. The thing she'd done back there, swapping a word as it was being spoken… that could be very, very useful, if she could figure out a way to do it beyond 'desperation-fueled epiphany.' It hadn't been easy, either; the headache slowly blossoming behind her forehead was truth of that. She'd just been too mad to care.

Another question for the list. For once, it didn't really bother her.

The bus pulled up a couple minutes later, squealing to a stop, and Taylor practically hopped up the stairs, flashing the driver a toothy smile as she did. He managed an awkward upturn of the lips in response as she fed in her bills, but she barely noticed, turning to look down the aisle and unconsciously opening her lens. It wasn't very crowded, but there were still a variety of Webs on display, enough that she couldn't help but marvel at their diversity: big and small, tight and sprawling, smooth and frayed...

Crackling-sizzling-exploding with energy, bright and blinding and beautifully confusing, subshoots eating subshoots eating subshoots like an ouroboros made of fireworks—

Oh. Fuck. Fuck.

"Oh, hey!" Lisa said cheerfully, waving from her seat. She patted the empty one next to her, staring Taylor dead in the eye. "What are you doing here?"

 

[Galeiam]

*Groans*

Hopefully she doesnt get steamrolled this time and manages to catch Lisa's flares fast enough to fuck her over.

 

[Ack]

"Stinky face".

Oh, Emma, that's golden.

 

[Spiny]

VIII.

Taylor froze, her hand still clutching the stabilizing pole. Lisa looked up at her, eyes glinting and predatory, and beckoned her to sit over at the very back back of the bus, where there would be at least four or five empty rows between them and the nearest person. She didn't move. A few people were staring now—not judging, not yet, just curious—but drag it out any longer, and that would change. Finally, she sighed, trudging across the aisle and slumping down in the crisscross-patterned chair, not making any effort to disguise her annoyance.

"What do you want?" she said sullenly, folding her arms. Lisa grinned even wider.

"What do you mean? Two friends just happen to run into each other on the same bus, and suddenly it's like, some big conspiracy?" she scoffed. "Don't be so bitter, Taylor."

Taylor's frown only deepened. "I got your email," she said, scooting away even as the other girl shifted a bit closer.

"What email?" Lisa's eyes widened innocently. "I don't even know your address."

Taylor stared at her flatly, at very irritated loss for what to say, before Lisa burst out laughing, shaking her head. "Okay, okay. And yeah, I know you got my email, and that you were gonna no-show, and that's just rude. So I had to improvise."

She knew? Taylor felt a brief flutter of unease. "Are you stalking me?" Probably not, her little subconscious voice retorted. Probably just her power. Or she could be straight-up bluffing. She wasn't sure which one she disliked more.

Another laugh, this one closer to a cackle. Lisa continued, in a slightly lower voice, "don't flatter yourself. I scooped it right off the top of your surface memories. Mind-reader, remember?"

Taylor nodded absently, focusing on Lisa's Web more than her words. She narrowed her lens, and the same roiling torrent of information loomed before her, just as impenetrable as it had been the last time they'd met. And just like last time, it was still workable; she just had to try a little harder. Delving deep inside the chaos, she danced against the tide, letting the sparkling waves of associations ebb and flow around her and picking out the nodes she needed.

Mind→reader→scan→face→eyes→contact⦚⦚eyes→focus→me→reading⦚⦚me→you→her→us→talk→later⦚⦚talk→here→bus→girl→Taylor...

Taylor→Hebert→Thinker...

There. Zeroing in, her eyes widened as her node came into focus: right now, it was practically the eye of the storm, surrounded on all sides by hundreds if not thousands of flaring, spasming subshoots. She traced a few of the stronger ones, doing her best not to stray too far off course...

And then, on a whim, picked up one of the effervescent nodes and carefully teased it away—the other nodes seemed to crowd around it, flickering and flailing, as if running interference— before sliding another one in its place. The subshoots twisted and swayed, tenuous and unstable, before suddenly snap-snap-snaping back to a different part of the Web entirely the node she'd moved already completely removed from the nest of connections she'd put it in.

"Hellooo? Earth to Taylor? Come in Ta—"

Lisa twitched, like she'd been stung, then turned Taylor, eyes narrowing to cold emerald points. "What was that?"

"What was what?" she replied innocently, trying to hide how much her mind was racing. What was that? She'd never seen someone's Web resist a change before—even if it wasn't really active defiance so much as moving *too goddamn fast. And Lisa had noticed, too, which was in some ways even weirder and more unnerving. Nothing she'd seen from this girl and her Web made any sense compared to she knew about her power so far, a fact that was becoming more disconcerting by the second.

"Don't bullshit me," Lisa snapped back, voice low and deadly. "You used your power, just now. On me. Just a little adjustment, nothing major. Testing the waters. Bet you do that on everyone you meet, right? Messing with their head, just a little, just to see how much you can get away with."

"I—I don't know what you're talking about," Taylor replied, managing to meet her eyes. Her voice quavered a little, and she hated herself for it. "My power doesn't work that way—"

There was a smack as Lisa slapped her. Not hard enough to bruise, but more than enough to shock. "Give me a fucking break, dude. You're a Master/Stranger. You think I don't know your game? You get in people's heads and rearrange things until they're more appealing to you. I get it. I'm not stupid, and I don't care what you do on your own time, but if you so much as dip your little metaphorical pinky toe into my brain ever again so help me God I will ruin your fucking life." The words were quiet, but they had weight, dripping with barely-restrained vindictiveness and malice.

Taylor stared back defiantly, resisting the urge to deck the blonde across the face. It would've been justified, too, but not justified enough to prevent her from getting thrown off the bus. She settled for straightening up and setting her jaw, refusing to be intimidated. "How?" she asked, lowering her voice to match Lisa's. "You're a teenager, not the CIA. Don't act like you have some network of informants under your thumb ready to stake out my house, or something." For all Taylor knew, she could have—but what she was saying didn't matter. It was a ploy, something to buy time while she looked through Lisa's Web, and attempted to circumnavigate the shimmering storm. She was getting better at it, slowly but surely, starting to form some semblance of a proper map in her mind amid the constant insanity.

Stake→out→study→find→information→life... Taylor smiled, even as she realized Lisa was staring at her, neck stiff and jaw tight. Another standoff. Well, fine. If she wanted to play that game, Taylor was going to come out on top. Probably.

"I don't need informants, or to stake out your house," Lisa broke the silence, shaking her head. "How many times do I have to say it?" She tapped her temple. " Mind. Reader. I already know all the little dirty details of your life, every embarrassing memory, ever love, ever regret... you think I can't end you by myself? With access to all that?"

Memory→thought→think→Thinker→power→me...

Taylor's mind raced, flicking through the subshoots at blinding speed. Every one lead to what felt like a hundred others, all nested and coiled around each other to the point where she could barely even tell what was supposed to link to what, but she was rapidly forming a more coherent picture of who Lisa actually was. All she had to do was keep talking, and it seemed like Lisa was more than willing to oblige...

Thinker→me→pericog...

"I'm nice, so I'm not going to try anything unless you try and fuck with me... but I have you, Taylor, under my effing thumb. Your power, your friends, your family, everything."

Pericog→conclusion→infer→hunch→gaps→fill—

"No," Taylor said suddenly."You don't."

Lisa rolled her eyes, the smirk as evident in her words as it was on her face. "Oh, damn. Jeez. You really got me there."

"You aren't a mind-reader. You lied, pretended to act like one to make me put my guard down," Taylor continued, the words coming out in a tumbling rush. "You're just a Thinker who makes really good guesses, and knows how to manipulate people. You're... you're a fraud." It was a gamble, sure, but the odds were in her favor. And if she was right...

An odd expression came over Lisa's face, like she'd swallowed something very unpleasant. She inhaled slowly through her nostrils, and Taylor had to resist a satisfied smirk of her own. "You know," she said airily, staring out the bus window, "I bet the Protectorate would love a power like yours." The words were sharp, cloying, so thick with sarcasm they practically oozed it. "Little teenage Master, out on her own, editing people's heads? How many have you changed now? Ten? Fifty? More? I'm sure they'd be totally cool with that if someone tipped them off. Wouldn't force you into the Wards or put you on their shit list, get surveillance teams on you 24/7 or anything. They'd just let it slide, right?"

Taylor's pulse quickened at the mention of the PRT, but she pushed past it. Focus on the words. Surveillance→house→apartment→move→Brockton→Docks→bribe... The nodes kept coming, and Taylor kept pushing through them, forming a response the second she felt the data points coalesce and click—

"You're one to talk," she shot back, half-whispering. "You've committed actual crimes, and you're threatening me based on what I might do?" Lisa stiffened at that, and she felt another burst of savage vindication. "Benson Dynamics and the PRT take grand theft pretty seriously, I think."

"You can't prove that," Lisa countered, looking and sounding noticeably irritated. "I can cover my tracks before you even find an office to report it."

"If you report me for my power, I won't have to prove it," Taylor said. "And yeah, you could disappear. But you have a nice apartment, right? A penthouse somewhere. That leaves a trail. And they'll still come after you, probably try and hunt you every waking moment of your life. Do you want that?"

"You're full of shit." Lisa shook her head again. "They have actual villains to worry about, not a few percent off the top of some chucklefuck CFO's hedge fund. You go and blab to them, the worst they'll do is re-open my case file. You think I don't have one already? You think I haven't done this before?"

Hedge→fund→account→password→access→transfer→engineer→pay→cash...

"Nine hundred thirty six thousand dollars is a lot of money," Taylor said softly. "Benson Dynamics, Metrocorp, and IBM care about money. Especially if it's a cape stealing it. Especially if that cape has been continuously doing it for years."

There was a pregnant pause. Lisa stared at her, livid with barely-repressed frustration. "You're smarter than you look, Taylor Anne Hebert." The words were slow and grudging, like they'd been forcibly pulled out of her. Taylor fought the urge to roll her eyes.

"Thanks, Sarah Louise Livsey."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you."

There was another pause, and then Lisa sighed, leaning back in her chair and putting on... well, it wasn't quite a smile, but was an admirable attempt. "...look," she said, sounding equal parts annoyed and subdued. "I'll be honest: you've got a bunch of potential."

"I'm flattered," Taylor said dully. "Maybe try leading with that next time."

"Maybe don't fuck around in my head next time!" Lisa hissed, that subsurface spite lashing back out before almost instantly retreating. "...but whatever. I'm here to make you an offer, not to argue. You and me, we could do a lot. Like, a lot a lot. We cover each other's backs, work together, and Brockton Bay is our oyster."

Taylor blinked, her mouth falling open in disbelief. "You're recruiting me?"

"Not recruiting." Lisa shook her head. "You're not my subordinate; I'm not that stupid. This would be a partnership. Equals."

Equals? Did Lisa really think she was that stupid? "A partnership for what?" And yet she still wanted to know more. Against her better judgment, Taylor yanked open the girl's Web again, dancing desperately though the subshoots as she tried to find anything vaguely relevant to the conversation. There were ideas—a bunch of them, in fact—but they were vague and nebulous, flickering and popping in and out of existence faster than she could catch them.

"Anything, really. Make our lives easy. Be happy. Get rich," Lisa said with a shrug. "I'm pretty sure you can think of more."

Taylor frowned."Aren't you already—"

"It's not about money." Lisa's voice lowered, crackling with intensity. "I don't give a shit about money. It's about seeing what we can do, how far we can push our limits. You and me together? We're the scariest bitches in the city; hell, the state! If you pull your weight—not like I'm not gonna pull mine—we're untouchable. Straight up. Don't you want to see what that's like?" She leaned forward in her seat, just enough for Taylor to scoot away, waiting for a response.

The offer was... tempting. Irritatingly tempting, actually, but the more she thought it over, the more absurd it got. Lisa, no matter how much she postured and fanned Taylor's ego, wasn't her friend. She was certain of that—well, almost certain. And, more importantly...

"No," she said finally, shaking her head. "I'm not going to be a criminal. I don't care how much we'd get done, I'm not stealing money or anything else from innocent people."

Lisa snorted, incredulous. "Innocent? Do you have any idea how much underhanded shit—" she cut herself off with a sigh. "Look, okay. Just... forget about the money completely. It doesn't matter. Zilch. Nada. We can even keep everything above-board, make the PRT squirm a little, that'd be fun— but seriously. Taylor. You are missing the point so effing hard if you did it any harder you'd end up in the next county. Means, not ends. That's what matters here. A chance to actually dosomething. Something to make them remember us."

Make them remember us. The words stuck in Taylor's mind, to her immense chagrin. Her power was beautiful, amazing, constantly nagging and needling her to be used... and so far, Lisa was the only one to acknowledge that. Encouraged it. Encourage it, even. She was unbearably smug, utterly untrustworthy, and possibly one of the most irritating people Taylor had ever met... but she was also a kindred spirit, in fucked-up kind of way, and that thought alone was enough to give her pause.

"I...' she opened her mouth, then closed it, and Lisa cackled.

"I saw that hesitation! You want it, don't you? You want it bad. I've been there. I know the feeling. It's like there's a fucking V12 up locked inside your brain and you're using it for grocery runs, it's fucking awful. So what do you say?" She stuck out a hand, wiggling her fingers. "You in?"

Taylor bit her lip, actually considering, even as she hated herself a little more every second for it. "What happens if I say no?"

Lisa laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You say no? I turn you in to the PRT, you turn me in to the Feds, and we both flush each other's lives down the toilet. Mutually assured destruction."

"You're kidding," Taylor said, in disbelief. She was bluffing. She had to be.

The blonde gave a toothy smirk. "Try me." A second passed. "You're not stupid, Taylor. I wouldn't be talking to you if you were." A compliment? That was fucking rich. Taylor would've smiled at the irony if she hadn't been so annoyed. "We can make something out of this. Something no other cape has ever done. Are you really going to pass that up? Let it slide? For what? To go back to wandering downtown, getting fucked with every day at school, always terrified to use your power? Your gift?" Her eyes were so bright, piercing, locked with hers, boring in... "I mean, if that's the life you want to live..." Lisa shrugged, sighing theatrically. "Can't stop you, I guess. But damn, I really expected more." The way she said the last few words was almost genuine, like she was really truly hurt at the refusal. Emphasis on 'almost.'

Taylor snorted. "Sorry to disappoint you."

Another shrug. "You haven't. Not yet."

The speakers chimed, and the bus slowed to a stop, doors sliding open with a hiss of hydraulics. Tattletale gave a spritely hop out of her seat, turning around and beckoning as she walked down the aisle. "Last chance!" she singsonged, giving Taylor a wink. "You know you want to."

Taylor sat there, motionless, legs feeling like they were welded to the seat. This was stupid. Incredibly stupid. The entire thing. Even putting the idea itself aside, it could be a setup, a trap, some weird gang initiation ritual... any number of awful outcomes she didn't really want to think about. Sure, she could've checked for those in Lisa's Web—she winced inwardly, kicking herself for not doing it—but it was too late now, and with so many things going on at once, there was a very real possibility she would've glossed over the important part anyway. It was a risk. A big, stupid, ugly, glaring risk, no matter which side she chose; the only question was which was worse than the other. A life under the eye of the PRT, or getting caught up in some self-aggrandizing teenage cape's delusions of grandeur? Unless it was all a bluff, but she didn't really feel like banking her future on 'unless'.

It wasn't fair. Taylor's throat tightened, and she felt a hot, coiling bubble of anger rising in her chest. It was the weekend, for God's sake. All she'd wanted to do was go home, decompress, and experiment with her power, not get fucking blackmailed and thrown into some stupid catch-22 straight out of a shitty cape novel. She didn't deserve this. Her face was growing hot, fingers going whiteknuckled on the bus seat, but she hardly noticed, paralyzed by anger and indecision.

Tattletale paused at the threshold of the door, looked back over her shoulder, her eyebrows arching as if to say, "well?" As she caught Taylor's searing glare, her face changed, a split- second flash of expression that was impossible to place—was that guilt? Then, with a nonchalant shrug, she exited the bus, glancing up through the window as she headed down the sidewalk. She said something—Taylor couldn't hear it, but from the way her lips moved, it looked like 'see you'.

Mutually assured destruction...

Fuck. Fucking fuck. Fuck it.

Taylor leapt to her feet, yanking on the cord as she stumbled towards the middle exit door, dragging her bag one-handed along behind her. A moment later, the bus lurched to a stop once more, the driver opening his mouth to yell something exasperated that was lost in the engine noise. The doors hissed open, cooling her face with a wave of crisp autumn air, and she took a deep, cleansing breath of it, setting her jaw.

Time to take a risk.

 

[john doe]

The interaction is really enjoyable to read. Lisa was really convincing there, her power makes that easy when used right though. This is gonna spiral out of control really quick considering the two powers here.

 

[Biigoh]

There is a reason why you don't fuck with someone's mind if they can actually detect it...

 

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

Do it, Tattletale! Doooo eeeeeet! Give the little mindbender a proper Lasombra induction.

 

[ScreamingMorgasm]

So um... I don't want concrete spoilers, but will this ship be sailing? Because I'd be fine with that. You know, hypothetically.

 

[RikkuEcRud]

Pretty sure Tattles' power renders her incapable of anything sexual due to the massive dump of squick it gives her about the process when she tries.