Chapter Text
Taylor Hebert sat on the chair, pink and yellow moths fluttering about her head like a halo. Right now, she had about fifteen of them and Emily Piggott suddenly had an attack of foreboding as she looked at the cute little girl kicking her feet on the too-tall chair.
Somehow. Somehow, she just knew this adorable, earnest and chatterbox of an eight-year-old girl was going to cause her headaches.
Her mother cleared her throat. “Director Piggott, my daughter is very interested in joining the Brockton Bay Wards. As you can see, her power is to control bugs.”
Emily sighed as Taylor looked around interestedly, beaming at Armsmaster and Miss Militia. Miss Militia smiled back and even Armsmaster managed a smile at her. Then again, even with being brusque around the team, he still managed to seem warm to many children.
“What kind of bugs?”
“Any bugs!” Taylor said, beaming and kicking her heels against her chair. She had a smart pink dress on with a yellow cardigan, making her somewhat resemble the bugs fluttering about her head. “Any bugs in my range!”
“And what’s your range, Taylor?” Miss Militia asked, a smile in her voice.
“Two whole blocks!” The girl announced brightly. “There’s one hundred thousand two hundred and fifty-four bugs in my control right now!”
A shiver passed through the room as they all felt something of a shadow move over them. The heroes looked at each other, then back at Taylor.
“I’m sorry. Did you say two whole blocks?”
“Yep!” Taylor nodded. “Two whole blocks. You wouldn’t believe how many cockroaches there are in the average house!”
“And I don’t think they want to know, Little Owl.” Annette said, ruffling her daughter’s hair.
“But Mooooom, why not? It’s really interesting. Like, did you know they’d probably survive a nuclear explosion? That’s so cool! They’re not very pretty though, I’d love them to be pink and yellow! My favourite bugs are these though!”
The fifteen moths fluttering around her head all landed on the desk and performed a salute at Piggott with their forelegs.
“That’s Benjy, Lenny, Steve, Dave, Rosie, Sherry, Tom, Alice, Raymond, Bob, Bobette, Laura, Dave the Twentieth, George and Dollie!” She pointed to each in turn.
Piggott eyed the girl’s mother. Annette shrugged. “Don’t look at me, Director, she has about fifty of them and they all have names. Honestly, she’s collected them longer than she has had powers. She’s just… always liked bugs.”
Emily sighed. “Right. Okay, so you’re wanting to join the wards, Miss Hebert?”
Taylor nodded excitedly, bouncing in her seat. “Uh huh! I wanna be a hero because heroes are awesome! I love heroes, big sis Emma got me an Alexandria action figure for Christmas last year and I’ve got Armsmaster’s face on my underwear which is really weird when you think about it because I think it was supposed to just be his logo which is still kinda weird because you’d think that it’d be Miss Militia’s face or logo because she’s a girl why is your face on girls’ underwear Mister Armsmaster?”
The adults in the room not related to Taylor all stared incredulously at the girl.
“I’m… not sure why.” Armsmaster managed after a moment, reconsidering for the hundredth time whether he needed to kill Terry the Intern for that mistake.
“Oh, well, maybe you should find out because it is a bit silly!” Taylor said brightly.
Armsmaster grunted and Emily sighed internally. She didn’t like parahumans in general, but between the other young girl to trigger recently and want to join the wards and Taylor she at least figured she’d be winning the PR side of things.
Annette ruffled her daughter’s hair again and looked over at Miss Militia. “I’m sure you’d rather not be involved in all the paperwork, Little Owl?”
Taylor shook her head. “Nope! It’s boring! Hey, can I meet the other Wards? I really really like Triumph, he’s nice!”
The heroes looked at each other, the last of them to raise a hand being Velocity.
Internally swearing, the speedster stood up and smiled at the little girl. It wasn’t her fault she was terrifying and adorable all at the same time. “Sure thing, Taylor. Here, if your mom is OK with it I’ll take you now.”
Annette smiled at the eight-year-old and nodded. “Off you go then, Little Owl. Do try to keep the babbling down a little.”
Taylor pouted as she was led off.
Annette looked around as everyone sighed in relief. “What?”
“Your daughter is very… intense.” Armsmaster, ever one to unwittingly dip his toes into piranha-infested social waters, spoke. Annette’s eyes narrowed and Miss Militia elbowed him. She remembered seeing the curly haired woman across the barricades at more than one rally calling her a bootlicker. She didn’t want a scene, especially if they wanted her daughter to join.
Eventually Annette sighed. “She is. But please refrain from insulting her.”
“It wasn’t an insult, Mrs. Hebert, I apologise if it sounded like one. Intensity can be good. I’m already convinced she can be a very effective Ward.”
The curly-haired woman eventually nodded. “Alright. Far be it for me to argue with the man whose face is on her underwear.”
Colin’s face coloured ever so slightly under the beard, but he kept his cool.
Annette picked up the first of the paperwork and Emily coughed once to get her attention. “These are just preliminiaries, we’ll need both parents’ permission for her to join and proper signing happens at the next meeting.”
Annette nodded and started filling them out, joining the conversation as it flowed around her. She wasn’t entirely thrilled about Taylor joining the wards, but her Little Owl had been insistent and even Carol had told her it’d be a good idea. Not that she often listened to Carol but for once the woman had been making good points.
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Velocity led Taylor into a large room after waiting in a corridor and an alarm sounding.
“The alarm’s for the wards, to give them time to mask up.” He smiled at Taylor, whose domino mask was slightly too big. Her moths still fluttered around her head and on the way down she’d regaled him with what sounded like a complicated genealogy of them.
It was a little intimidating, though he’d never tell her that, to have a little girl so fixated on creepy crawlies.
The door in front of them eventually opened and he led her through, the eight-year-old insisting on holding his hand the entire way.
Taylor gaped at the big room, with the huge TV and couch, the tables and the shiny console. “Wow!” She exclaimed. “It’s so futurey!”
Some of the moths fluttering about her head flew around the room, brushing at different parts as he led her to the couch, on which a girl in jeans and a green blouse peeked over the edge, a domino mask on her own face. Instantly she cracked into a smile and bounced off the top of the couch, space warping around her as she landed in front of Taylor.
Taylor, for her part, cheered. “Oh wow! That was so cool!” She gushed. “You make space go all wibbly!” She beamed at the girl and took her mask off immediately as she spoke. “I’m Taylor! I control bugs!”
Vista’s eyes grew round as she nodded. “I warp space and did you say you control bugs?! What kind? How many?!”
Taylor threw her hands up over her head. “All of them! And really really far! I love bugs! Bugs are friends, not food!”
Vista’s eyes were shining. “I warp space and make it all small and squished and they say I’m a Shaker Nine!”
Taylor’s own eyes grew round. “Oh wow! That’s a really big number! I know because I went on PHO and did you know they don’t like answering questions about bugs? I was like ‘what kind of bugs are good for making silk’ because I could make a costume out of them but they were all like ‘ew bugs’ and I was like ‘well really’ because it’s very rude to talk at me like that, but anyway I saw the ratings and it was like wow so Shaker Nine must be really really powerful!”
Vista and Velocity stared at the girl, who’d said that all in one breath.
“What?”
As Vista and Taylor started speaking more and more in the ways young girls can that soon becomes incomprehensible to anyone outside of the conversation, Velocity wondered what would become of Brockton Bay if these two were going to be as terrifying a team as he was contemplating in his head. He somehow started feeling bad for any villains that came across them.
Eventually Vista took her mask off. “I’m Missy!” She said happily, throwing her arms around Taylor, who had graduated via conversational gabbling to ‘new best friend’. Missy was ‘new bestest friend pending Amy Approval’ because as her mom always said ‘bestest friends aren’t a zero-sum game’.
“Have we a new Ward, sir?” Triumph, in his lion-themed helmet walked in from the console, idly wafting at a pink moth near his face. His hand impacted it and it fluttered to the ground in a spiral.
Taylor gasped. “Dave!” She ran over, picking the little pink moth up and cradling it in her hands, looking up at Triumph from where she was knelt. “He’s the Twentieth of His Name! Don’t be mean to Dave!” She pouted up at him.
Triumph stared and remembered his less energetic but still chatterbox cousin and closed his eyes, feeling utterly stupid. “I’m very sorry to have hit Dave, Twentieth of His Name, King of the Pink Moths.”
Taylor looked confused, then at the weakly fluttering moth in her hands, then back up and then nodded. “Dave, Twentieth of His Name and King of the Rosy Maple Moths, accepts your apology.” She reached up and put the little moth on top of her head, where he stayed, slightly tangled in her hair as he rested.
Triumph held a hand out to Taylor and she let him pull her to her feet as he took off his helmet.
“My name’s Rory.”
“I’m Taylor! I control bugs! All of the bugs! In two blocks!”
Rory raised an eyebrow and held out his hand, which she shook seriously. “Well then, I’m sure your parents are filling the forms out now, but let me say welcome to the team, Taylor. Do you have a cape name?”
Taylor shook her head. “Uh uh, not yet, but I maybe sorta like the name Miss Rosy Maple Moth, though I bet it becomes just ‘Miss Moth’ which isn’t too bad I mean I could be called Skitter or Weaver or I dunno, Beetle or something else, but I love moths! Moths are great and I mean they’re all fluffy – butterflies are nice too, but they aren’t fluffy! Look at these too, they’re pink and yellow and I love them, they’re called Rosy Maple Moths!”
Rory stared a moment and then shrugged. “You sound like you know a lot about them.”
“I do! Big Sis Emma said to me once that bugs are friends not food so I started reading about them and they really are except for mosquitoes, I put mosquitoes into spider webs whenever they come into my range, horribly nasty little things, but spiders keep pests out and bees, bumbly honeybees make honey and pollinate flowers and crickets and grasshoppers sing – oh that’s why she’s called cricket, that mean drony lady in the mean Empire people! She makes noises like a cricket! I’m gonna find her and bury her in real crickets! Do you think I could get an attorney for the crickets so they can sue for defamation? Auntie Carol says that defamation is really bad but not as bad as what Uncle Alan does which is dee-force. I dunno what that is but it sure sounds bad, anyway the crickets all go chirp chirrup…”
The three parahumans looked at each other as Taylor rambled, though Vista got sucked back into a conversation.
Rory stood next to Velocity, looking between the girls as they discussed bugs and space warping and his grin was a little malicious. “Should we start a betting pool, sir?”
“About what?”
“About which villain they absolutely terrify first? Missy’s powerful enough but if Taylor is as good as she says with bugs, that’s a potent combo. If I were a villain here, I might start shaking in my boots.”
“Triumph, that’s a very immature and unprofessional way of doing things.” Velocity said, then pondered a moment. “Five dollars says they traumatise hookwolf first.”
“I’ll put five on Oni Lee.”
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Once Taylor’s babbling conversations, trading of phone numbers and a promise to meet up with Vista outside of the wards and Annette’s much less interesting paperwork journey had finished, the mother and daughter left. The pink moths still fluttered around the little girl’s head, and once they were gone everyone in the room relaxed a little.
“Well then.” Emily said, leaning back in her chair. She looked around. “That just happened. Thoughts?”
“She’s adorable.” Miss Militia said. “Earnest and sweet. Robin said she and Vista got along like a house on fire – Vista always tries acting all grown up, but Taylor definitely helped mitigate that when they were talking. I think they’ll be good for each other.”
“And absolutely terrifying.” Velocity pointed out. He looked around and shrugged. “What? Just telling it like I see it.”
“We’ll need proper power testing, of course, but the level of control she has over her insects and her range, I can see what, Master 7 or 8. Not to mention be able to control how many did she say?”
“One hundred thousand two hundred and fifty-four.” Miss Militia said flatly.
“That many bugs all at once, that’s got to be a Thinker rating.”
“Indeed.” Emily noted that down. “We’ll have them for proper signing when they come back, along with power testing. Still, a powerful Shaker and a powerful Master is a potent combination.”
Armsmaster nodded. “Between them they should be very effective.”
Assault laughed. “And they’ll be a PR coup. I can already hear Glenn Chambers’ hands rubbing together from here. You probably want him directly in on these two, Emily. He’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
“Noted.”
“Still, two kids that young triggering…” Assault said softly after a moment spent looking at the desk. “What a world we live in.”
Battery put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed and he shook himself. “They seem a little more well-adjusted than I’d thought. Well, Taylor does. I think Missy is hiding something.”
“Both of them, I think.” Miss Militia said. “But they’re both young kids who triggered. I think we’ll probably want to request a dedicated therapist. With two powerful and young parahumans, maybe we can snag Dr. Yamada. I’ll see if I can use some markers to get her in as soon as possible. It won’t do if either of them goes off the reservation.”
Emily nodded. “Do it. I don’t normally advocate coddling but if it gets us two useful sets of boots on the ground in this hellhole that won’t break, I’m not going to complain.”
Velocity piped up. “Triumph raised a good point, and I think I should bring you all into it.”
“What is it?”
“He put five dollars down that they traumatise Oni Lee first. I put five on Hookwolf. Any takers?”
“Velocity.” Emily’s tone was warning. “Betting on such things is highly unprofessional.” She smirked evilly. “So count me in; I’ll put five on Skidmark.”
“Squealer.” Miss Militia said.
Armsmaster grunted. “Cricket.”
Assault and Battery looked at each other, then at the others. “We’ll go with Lung.”
“Ooh, big guns.” Velocity said. He noticed Emily marking the bets down and pulling a jar out that looked like it had once been a swear jar before she’d given up due to the amount of swearing in her life not altering.
“Alright you lot, put your fives in and we’ll start the official ‘Wards Traumatise Who First’ pool.”
Armsmaster raised a hand as he stood up after the rest had gone, then dropped it. Emily noticed.
“Something to add, Armsmaster?”
“Just… a thought, Director.” He said gruffly. “Perhaps consider preparing a restraining order.”
“Oh?” The large woman raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded.
“Yes, I think you’ll want to keep Mouse Protector as far away from Brockton Bay and especially our two newest wards as possible.” He said. Emily paled and he nodded. “I see you understand what I’m getting at. Good afternoon, Director.”
Emily made a note of Armsmaster’s unusually astute social observation, before typing out a communique and appending the file on Taylor Hebert.
She sent it out and was answered pretty quickly. Glenn Chambers had learned to accept calls from Brockton Bay because out of many regions, they needed a lot of PR help – for both the Protectorate and the PRT.
Usually because of Armsmaster or Assault.
“Emily.” Glenn smiled at her and she sighed. She hated PR. “I assume something’s gone wrong again? I’m not seeing anything on the net, so you must’ve caught it early. You’re either getting better at being psychic, they’re getting predictable or you’ve got something interesting for me.”
Emily smiled nastily at him and sent off two further files. “Have a read.”
Glenn did so, eyebrows raising. “Is this for real?”
“Yes. Two very young, very photogenic, very enthusiastic wards all ready for your personal PR attention. One’s an insect Master, the other a powerful Shaker. Local PR’s already taken a look and given the Shaker the name ‘Vista’ but definitely could do with more help, and the insect girl’s a clean slate more or less.”
“Insects… Could be difficult to do.”
“Oh, it won’t be, because I know the girl well enough now to know exactly what she wants her costume to be based off of.”
Glenn raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Look up rosy maple moths.”
Glenn tapped on his keyboard and as the images on his search appeared, his eyebrows shot over his hairline. “Oh my god. We’re gonna make a fortune in merchandising. Every little girl’s going to want to be one of these two.”
“I thought you might like it. I think it warrants the personal touch, don’t you think?”
Glenn laughed. “Very clever. I’ll confirm with Rebecca and be on the first flight down to your little hell hole.”