Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

January 3rd, 2011

Taylor Hebert opened her eyes, and promptly fell in love.

This was a novel experience for the girl, and as a result she naturally found it rather alarming. For one thing, she’d previously believed herself to be straight, and although she was certain she’d still feel some attraction to men, that paled in comparison to the tired brown eyes and freckle-spotted face of the girl currently leaning over her. For another, as Taylor gradually regained her faculties, she realized that the girl was in fact Panacea, a rare healing cape and one of the greatest heroes in all of Brockton Bay.

“Hey. Can you hear me?” Panacea asked, and her voice was absolutely lovely. Lower than she’d expected, with a bit of a rasp, and warm like hot chocolate on a winter day. It also sounded so very tired and weary, and that was just wrong. She would have to fix that, as soon as she could.

“Mrglmf,” Taylor said, in response. She was in a bed, she belatedly realized, and by the prick in her arm and the fluorescent lights—and the presence of Panacea—it was almost certainly a hospital room. Then she pulled herself together and said, “Uh, yes. I can.”

“Great,” the healer said, a hint of sarcasm lacing her tone. “So, normally I ask for permission before I heal people, but you were unconscious and it was pretty urgent. Your dad gave permission for you, so if you’ve got a problem with it take it up with him.”

Taylor shook her head as quickly as she could. “No, no, no problem at all. But, uh, do you know what happened to me?”

The girl gave a put upon sigh that immediately made Taylor feel awful for asking. Panacea’s time was incredibly valuable, and now she had asked her to spend time on something that she could have just waited and asked her dad or one of the nurses instead. Before she could take her question back, though, Panacea had already started speaking.

“All I know is what you needed healed. You had some bad lacerations on your legs and arms, and a real nasty abrasion over most of your back, plus a decent amount of internal bruising in your hands and feet. The big problem though was the infections—by the time I got here, you were dealing with toxic shock and the start of a sepsis reaction that was getting real close to septic shock before I got here. It was actually pretty close. A bit later and it would have gotten to your brain, and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about that.” Panacea shrugged, although the girl didn’t seem very upset by that thought.

Distantly, a part of Taylor realized that Panacea had kind of terrible bedside manners. That thought was overshadowed by the realization that the girl had almost certainly saved her life. And, yes, that was what Panacea did, but… after spending so long struggling to just survive each day at Winslow, feeling like she was drowning and nobody was willing to give her a hand to pull herself out, well. It felt like a revelation.

“Thank you,” she said. “I mean, that’s not enough, you saved my life, but it’s all I can offer right now. Thank you, Panacea.”

“Yeah, sure,” the cape said. She stood up from her chair by Taylor’s bedside and slipped out of the room without another word. Taylor’s eyes lingered on the door, on where the healer had just been. She didn’t know how she was going to repay Panacea, but she knew that somehow, she would make sure that she did so.

And then her attention was drawn to a new sense, one that she hadn’t paid much attention to since she woke up because Panacea’s freckle-filled face and that delicious raspy voice had taken all her focus. Now that the other cape was gone, though, Taylor realized two things. First, that her body felt great—like, better than it had in years, all of the accumulated tension from her constant stress and anxiety wiped out. The second thing, though, was that she could feel, for lack of a better word, all of the shadows in her room, and beyond as well. Everywhere that had been cast in darkness, whether that was the area underneath the bed she was lying on or the human-shaped shadow of the nurse walking by, she just knew exactly the shape and where it was relative to her. 

She held one hand a few inches up off the bedsheets and felt as a new shadow formed underneath it. Then she reached out mentally and touched that new shadow, felt a mote of power pass from her to that spot of darkness. It seemed to writhe for a moment, and then it was like part of the shadow was pulling itself up and out of the rest of the material. It stepped out into the light, scuttling on eight spindly legs, and even though Taylor could tell that it was a three-dimensional creature it still looked like a shadow given life, which meant she could see straight through it to the bedspread beneath it, albeit darkened in the same way a shadow might be. It almost looked like it was just the shadow cast by an invisible creature, but at the same time Taylor could feel the little critter with her mind and she knew that it was the shadow.

She was a cape, then. Somehow, that didn’t surprise Taylor as much as it really ought to. If anything, it felt like she should have expected it. Of course Taylor Hebert would end up with one of the most patently villainous looking powers she’d ever heard of, outside of maybe Nilbog or Bonesaw. Because even if she couldn’t help but see her little shadow spider as a cutie, she knew that the unnaturally spindly limbs, the sharp fangs, and the large size—it was about six inches around, after all, and she knew that it was very far from the largest spider she could summon—would almost certainly unsettle pretty much anybody else.

 She also had a feeling that this was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what her power could do, but there were better places to experiment with new powers than a hospital room. With a thought, she had the spider crawl up onto her palm. Then she pulled her palm shut, crushing the spider and returning it to wispy shadows, and feeling the little bit of power she’d expended on making it return to her.

And then Taylor had an idea. A terrible, horrible, brilliant idea. Because, as wonderful and powerful of a healer as Panacea was, the cape was just a healer, and that meant she was practically defenseless against many of the dangers of the world. And sure, she had the rest of New Wave to protect her, but for someone as wonderful as Panacea that wasn’t enough. Taylor didn’t know if she’d received these powers for a reason, but that didn’t matter. She’d found a reason, and that was the most important thing.

Chapter Text

January 25th, 2011.

Amy was broken out of a restless sleep by a firm hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. She groggily blinked the sleep from her eyes, then winced as she registered that the overhead light in her room had been turned on. A quick check of her watch told her that it was 3:37 am, long before she normally got up for school. 

“Amy,” a cold voice said, from right next to her bed. Amy scrunched her eyes up and squinted to see that Carol was standing next to her, a tight expression of annoyance and concern on the woman’s face. She was wearing her costume, which meant that this was most likely official New Wave business. “We need to go.” 

“Yeah, alright,” she said, wiping the sleep from her eyes and stumbling out of bed. She fumbled over to her closet, opening it up and grabbing her Panacea robes, which she pulled on over the ratty oversized shirt and boxer briefs that she used as pajamas. The robe was one massive piece, like a huge oversized hoodie, and it slipped on easily over her clothes. Normally she was a little more professional in what she wore beneath her costume, but given she was being woken up again at the ass-end of the morning to heal some idiot who had gotten themselves hurt, she figured people could just deal. Carol was giving her a disappointed expression, but Amy really couldn’t give half a shit about that right now. 

“What’s going on?” Amy asked, rubbing her eyes as she followed Carol out of her room.

“There was a shootout between the ABB and members of that new gang, the Merchants,” the woman said. “Challenger was patrolling nearby and was the first to respond. From what I heard, she was able to subdue several of the gang members before Oni Lee arrived. She took a fragmentation grenade at nearly point blank range and went down hard. Oni Lee left then, but apparently her suit sensors suggested that she might not make it if just given conventional treatment. That’s when they called me.”

“Christ,” Amy said, biting her lip, even as she followed Carol outside. “Alright, let’s get this over with.” Carol shot her a warning look, probably for her attitude, but she didn’t say anything. Amy was grateful for that—she was willing to be on call for emergency healing, because she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if a hero died that she could have saved just because she wanted her beauty sleep, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. 

Aunt Sarah was waiting outside the house, ready to fly them both over. She was one of the best options for carrying Panacea, since she had both versatile shields and powerful blasting attacks that could help keep the healer safe. Amy appreciated that, even if being carried bridal-style by her aunt was always a bit humiliating. At least she had it better than Carol, who had to transform into her breaker state and be carried by Amy for the duration of the flight. It felt a little ridiculous, being carried by her aunt while she held an orange-yellow orb the size of a basketball that was also her adoptive-mother. It was the less glamorous part of cape life, the utilitarian solutions that would never get featured on the cover of a magazine or a PR shoot, but it meant that the three of them were able to safely get halfway across the city in under ten minutes. They were moving too fast for conversation, which suited Amy just fine—she needed the time to wake up, after all, and she wasn’t much in the mood for a conversation with her aunt besides.

Lady Photon threw up a shield as she landed, covering their approach. Amy stumbled to her feet, letting go of the Brandish Ball as she did so, which promptly snapped back into her mother’s figure, a glowing sword in one hand. Amy knew that Carol hated using that part of her power for an extended period of time, just as she knew that the woman was too stubborn to not use it just because of that. 

The street had seen better days, was Amy’s first impression. Men and women from both gangs were lying on the ground, some in pools of their own blood, and several parts of the street looked to have been blown up—Oni Lee’s work, unless she missed her guess. Amy had seen the aftermath of enough of his fights, and removed enough shrapnel from his victims, to get a sense of his grenades. The uninjured gangsters must have fled, likely at the appearance of Challenger or Oni Lee, but they seemed to have left behind their wounded comrades. That would probably mean more work for Amy healing them up enough to stand trial, but that could wait.

Most of her attention was drawn toward a woman in a red suit with those golden military tassel things on her shoulders, lying on the ground and slowly bleeding out. She must have been hit with one of Oni Lee’s grenades from practically point blank range, based on the fragmentation pattern that Amy could see even from a distance. A normal human likely would have died from that kind of injury long before she could get medical help, but between Challenger’s decent Brute rating and the kevlar that made up her suit, the hero had managed to hold on long enough for Amy to get there.

Quickly, Amy rushed over and dropped onto her knees next to the hero, reaching out and placing her hand on the woman’s unmasked face—one of the oddities around Challenger, the woman preferred to be unmasked in her hero form and disguise her civilian identity instead. Immediately, Amy got a sense of the woman’s biology, and she grimaced despite herself. Far from the worst injury she’d healed, but the impact of the explosion had sent thirty-seven pieces small of metal into the woman’s body and had severely bruised not just her skin but also several of her organs and bones. Removing the pieces of metal and healing the lacerations was easy enough, and fortunately Challenger had the good sense to cover her head with her arms before the explosion. It meant that, while her arms had done a decent impression of swiss cheese before Amy got to them, the hero didn’t have any dangerous debris in her head and neck.

The secondary blast injuries dealt with, Amy moved on to the primary blast injuries—those caused by the supersonic pressure wave passing through the body at close proximity. That was what caused the bruising, the ruptures in the lung, the hemorrhaging in the colon, and the damage to the woman’s ears and eyes. One of the eyes seemed to have been more severely damaged than the other, for some reason—it looked like there might have been some kind of older injury there, but Amy didn’t have time to deal with that. Fortunately, bruising was actually a fairly easy thing for Amy to treat, if a bit tedious. The blood and biomass was all still there, after all, it was just in the wrong place. All Amy had to do was heal the damaged and ruptured blood vessels, as well as the other soft tissue or organs, and then direct the blood to be reabsorbed into the bloodstream.

Amy kept working, losing track of time and everything else as she repaired the damages to the woman’s body. Her healing was fairly fast, but concussive blasts were always hard to work on given that they impacted the entire body at once and caused damages in different and novel ways depending on the medium of the body part they were passing through, and they also tended to wreak havoc on all the tiny and finicky parts of the body that required more focus like the eyes or inner ear.

It was actually something of an interesting challenge, but eventually Challenger was healed in full—and if Amy had gone past just saving the woman’s life to bringing her back to perfect health, well, she wasn’t exactly in a rush to go healing the gangsters who had decided to get in a shoot out in the middle of the street at three in the morning. The woman was barely conscious, because even if she’d protected her head the blast wave had passed through her brain and that had caused damage she couldn’t heal (or rather, she could, but not without breaking her rules, and she refused to even think about that). The injury would likely present as a concussion that for most would be debilitating for the next couple weeks, but the woman’s brute rating seemed to have protected her from a more severe result and Amy was pretty sure the woman would be more or less fine in a day or two. Amy did heal up the minor intracranial hemorrhage, since that didn’t require actually touching the brain itself.

Having taken care of all the injuries that could be immediately dangerous or lethal, Amy let out a pant and sat back on her heels, wiping the sweat from her brow. It was cold, in the middle of night and in the middle of the Winter, but using her power like this was intense and caused her to sweat anyways. 

And then there was a sudden shout and Amy looked up in time to see an Asian man standing ten yards away, blood seeping through his green bandana and caking the side of his head, and a pistol in his hand pointed directly toward her.  She flinched away from the sight and a moment later there was the crack of a gunshot. Amy instinctively ducked, waiting to feel the impact, but she was unwounded. At the same time, she was to put together what must have happened happened—one of the gangsters had broken away from the rest of the fighting and, seeing Challenger’s bleeding form, he had apparently decided to try and finish her off. The fact that Amy had been right there and could easily have been hit apparently didn’t factor into his calculations at all. Of course, Lady Photon had almost certainly had a shield up that would have taken the bullet, but the man couldn’t have known that, and Amy’s instincts hadn’t taken that into account either.

Then there was a scream, and when she looked up she saw something out of a nightmare. She’d known that the shot had missed both her and Challenger, and now she could see why. It hadn’t just been Aunt Sarah’s shield. A massive spider, over a foot tall and strangely translucent like shadow given form, had apparently leapt onto his arm right before he fired, drawing his aim down and well off target. That spider was now crawling up his arm, even as the man let out a series of horrified screams and tried to shake the spider off. Eventually he was successful, the spider falling off his shoulder and landing on the ground, where he promptly emptied his entirely clip into its body, until it shattered apart with a sound like broken glass.

That took long enough for Aunt Sarah to close the distance, and a moment later the man was blasted into the ground by a powerful laser blast. He groaned once and then went silent, but she could see him breathing and she knew he hadn’t died. Since he’d tried to shoot her, though, Amy figured that she could wait to actually heal the dickhead.

Several more massive spiders seemed to form around the downed man, almost as if they’d appeared out of thin air, and their weight seemed to keep him down. That must have been the final straw for the other gangsters, the ones who hadn’t already fled or been severely injured. Several of them took one look at the massive spiders, then looked over at the Lady Photon’s glowing forcefield and Brandish’s golden weaponry, and they made the prudent choice to run.

And, just when Amy thought the situation was more or less resolved, there was a sound like the rustling of leaves that grew and grew into a loud susurrus like rain falling outside, but there wasn’t a single cloud overhead. And then they began to emerge from a nearby alleyway, and everyone froze.

The creatures were hard to see in the darkness, and there was a strange effect to them that made it hard to focus on them—a Stranger effect, maybe—and Amy realized that they were almost transparent, although the night was darker where they passed. She could only see flashes of their shape, but that was enough. A glimpse of legs, horribly thin and spindly. The silhouette of two bulbous sections attached together. A flicker of fangs, curved and horribly sharp, and above them even four dark circles that read as eyes. That was when it clicked, when all of the disconnected pieces all formed one image, and she just about pissed herself when she realized that it was a swarm of massive spiders, ranging in size from a tennis ball to a pit bull, had all come piling out of the narrow alley.

By their very nature, it was hard to get a good grasp of the number of spiders there, but it was easily over a hundred. She stumbled backwards, letting out a little whimper, but she was relieved when the spiders seemed to stop approaching about thirty feet away. Her relief was short lived, however, as a louder clicking sound came from the alleyway. The figure that emerged was genuinely one of the most terrifying things that Amy had ever seen, and Vicky had forced her to watch far more horror films than she would have liked.

The bottom half looked like the other spiders, although it was absolutely massive. The torso alone was the size of a compact car, and the legs looked like they would be a full ten feet at full extension. Whatever stranger effect was going on with the other spiders was absent here. Instead, the creature was completely black, darker than anything that Amy had ever seen before, as though it entirely absorbed every photon of light that reached it, and the legs looked like spears of void cutting through the world. What really drew her eye was the body though. Where a normal spider would have pedipalps and eyes at the end of its cephalothorax, this creature’s body instead transitioned into a recognizably human form, rising from the waist up. The figure was wearing a reinforced black long sleeve shirt with a gray hooded sleeveless vest over top edged with a deep red accent. Their fingers were covered in fingerless gloves, and their face was completely obscured by a black gas mask, while curls of black hair fell down their back in spirals that twined together with the black material that made up the rest of their form.

Amy had never heard of this villain before—and they were quite obviously a villain, with a costume like that, and the swarm of shadow spiders that they clearly controlled. That wasn’t the kind of power a hero used, at least not in such a frightening and ruthless way.

“Why are you here?” Brandish asked, fury in her voice and a longsword made of light in one hand.

“Panacea,” the villain said, their voice distorted by the gas mask over their face. Amy let out a little squeak of terror, and then froze up completely when the villain turned to look at her. As Amy stared into the dark glass of the villain’s mask, she felt as though Death itself was looking back at her.

“What about her?” Brandish cut in, stepping between Amy and the villain. As much as Amy often had a problem with Carol, in this moment she very much appreciated the effort. 

“You can’t protect her,” they said, not looking away from Amy for even a second. “You are too weak.”

“How dare you!” Brandish said, a mask of fury wrapping over her face. With a flick of her wrist, a long whip made of light formed in her other hand, and she charged toward the villain. “If you think I’ll just stand there and let you threaten my team, you clearly don’t know who you’re dealing with!”

Brandish rushed forward, cracking the whip and sending the end of it straight toward the villain’s body quicker than they could react. Or rather, quicker than they should have been able to react, but somehow the villain did anyways. The villain’s spider body moved so much faster than a creature that size had any right to, ducking the length of the whip and closing in toward Brandish in a moment. Two of the legs caught Brandish in the middle of her charge and, with a contemptuous flick, sent the woman flying away from them. Brandish barely had time to change into her breaker state, turning into that yellow orb of pure light, before she hit a nearby wall. Fortunately, she was practically invincible in that state, and a moment later she popped back out into her normal state, but she was surrounded by a mass of the shadowy spiders. Carol was working to cleave through them with an axe in one hand and a sword in another, both made of golden light, but they were nimble and for every one shadow spider she took down, two more seemed to take their place.

Then Lady Photon was in front of the villain, floating over them with one hand charging up a laser blast. The blast connected, striking the woman in the large spider abdomen and blasting parts of the shadow off, but it just reformed a moment later. Then the villain turned around in a blur of skittering limbs, pointing the back of her spider abdomen toward the flying cape, and then there was a burst of ink-black thread that shot from the villain’s spinnerets and collided with Aunt Sarah. The woman let out a shriek as the black thread seemed to stick to her body, and then the villain had grabbed the length of thread connecting her to the flier and, with a twist of her body, she dragged the woman down and into a nearby wall, where she was promptly stuck fast by the inky thread around her.

It had barely taken ten seconds for the villain to disable and distract two powerful heroes, and abruptly Amy realized that there was nobody between her and that monster. Then there was a burst of movement and then Amy let out an actual shriek, because the villain was right in front of her, looking down at her impassively through the black lenses in the gas mask. 

Amy reacted on instinct, one hand coming out to touch the shadow and—nothing. Whatever this was, it wasn’t alive in a way that her powers could work on it. That meant this was probably a projection or a breaker state rather than a changer, a small part of her mind observed. The rest of her mind was busy screaming in terror and coming to terms with the fact that she was about to die.

The front legs of the spider buckled and then the villain’s face was right in front of her, staring right at her like she was an insect that had been trapped in the spider’s great web. “You are left unharmed this time,” they said, their head cocking to the side in a predatory manner, cast in the shadow that Amy’s head cast from the streetlight behind her. The message was obvious—Amy was at the villain’s mercy, and that could change at their whim. “But I will continue to watch you, Panacea.”

And then the villain seemed to fall forward even more, as though collapsing to the ground. For a moment, Amy thought they were going to faceplant into the asphalt, but their body seemed to just pass through the ground instead like they were diving into water. A moment later, they were completely gone, and at the same time all the other spiders nearby vanished as well, unravelling as though the shadows that made them up were mere smoke being blown away by the wind.

Amy fell backwards onto her butt, overwhelmed. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Instead, she just started to laugh, a high and hysterical thing. Apparently there was a new villain in Brockton Bay, strong enough to completely no-sell her mother and aunt, and they had an unhealthy fixation on Amy herself. It was too much. What else could she do, in the face of that insanity, but laugh?

Brandish was there a few seconds later, and Lady Photon followed a moment later—apparently all the other spiders and thread had vanished when the villain had left. “Are you okay, Amy?” Brandish—no, it was Carol right now, she could tell—asked her, checking Amy over for damage. And, abruptly, Amy found herself bursting into tears.

~*~

Taylor stepped out of the shadows into the warehouse she’d set up as her base. She let her spider form lapse around her, the concentrated shadows that formed her legs dissipating into wisps of smoke, and then she was standing on her normal two legs. She’d waited nearby, her spiders ready, until Panacea had finished healing Challenger and the gang members who were in a critical condition. Fortunately, Taylor hadn’t needed to step in again, but she’d had eyes on the whole area and had been ready if necessary. 

It had gone better than she’d expected, all things considered. For her debut as Panacea’s bodyguard, she’d been worried that she might mess something up, but she’d managed just fine. Taylor had managed to clearly convey her intentions—even if she’d gotten a bit anxious and had stumbled over her words a bit—and she’d managed to back that up by protecting Panacea. It was a bit annoying that she’d been attacked by other members of New Wave, but she supposed it made some sense. She had, after all, told them that they were too weak to protect Panacea, and that Taylor herself was the only one who could. It was only reasonable that they would feel the need to test her and make sure she actually could protect the healer, wasn’t it? It would be irresponsible, otherwise.

For her first cape fight, she thought that she had done fairly well. Of course, she’d had to hold back against Brandish and Lady Photon. She didn’t want to kill any other heroes, after all, and she certainly didn’t want to cause more work for Panacea. Besides which, they were on the same side, weren’t they? Taylor wasn’t exactly a hero, she knew, but they were all devoted to keeping Panacea safe. That was a worthy cause, and she was certain that they would understand. Panacea was worth more than any other hero in the Bay, and her safety was paramount.

And honestly, Panacea had been so cute today, too! She’d clearly been pulled out of bed, and the baggy circles underneath her eyes made the girl look a little like a raccoon. Not that Taylor wanted Amy to be tired, but that wouldn’t stop her from admiring how cute she looked when she was tired. And she was also adorable when she was focused on her healing, the way that her brow furrowed just a bit as she used her powers. Taylor had been so distracted by Amy’s cuteness that she’d almost missed the gangster who’d tried to shoot the healer, which was definitely bad bodyguard behavior, but at least she’d caught him in time. She’d teleported one of her spiders through his shadow and had knocked his arm to the side before he could fire, and she’d been ready to swarm him before Lady Photon had taken him out. 

Taylor hummed to herself as she pulled her normal clothes out of a duffel bag and got ready to remove her cape outfit. It wasn’t much of a costume, she knew, but it had been assembled more from necessity than anything else. Taylor had spent some time reading about the dangers in the Bay, and specifically the kind of dangers that Panacea would regularly face. Apparently the healer was immune to infections and airborne dangers, for the most part, which meant Taylor had to prepare for those threats too—hence, the gas mask. 

The reinforced shirt had eaten into her savings, but given how she was intending on putting herself between Panacea and any threats, that had seemed like a reasonable investment to keep from needing to constantly get new clothes. When she was in her changer state, she had a much greater degree of resilience, and transforming fully into her shadow swarm for a while seemed to gradually heal most injuries, but for some reason it didn’t do anything for damages to her clothing. As for the black vest, well, that had mainly been for the front pockets—she kept a stock of first aid supplies there, in case she had to stabilize someone before Panacea could get there, along with high calorie snack bars and caffeine pills to support Panacea during long emergencies.

All told, it wasn’t exactly the most impressive outfit, she knew, but she wasn’t really trying to be a hero. She was more of a body guard to an actual hero, and practical clothing was better for that position anyways. 

Taylor changed out of her protective clothing, pulling off the gas mask and bundling it together with the shirt and vest, and changing into a more casual hoodie and jeans combo. She stuffed her protective clothes into her old backpack, slinging it over her shoulder, and then she walked toward the nearest shadow. Stepping inside, Taylor allowed her body to change, turning wispy first and then bursting into hundreds of large spiders, each of which was fully under her control. It was a weird sensation, her body being nowhere and everywhere all at once, but after a while it had become second nature. Then her spider swarm began to flow through the shadow, teleporting to another shadow a few hundred feet away with the sensation of squeezing through a small tube. 

She made a series of teleports, one after another, appearing for only a brief moment as a skittering swarm of shadow spiders before they all surged to another shadow. There were a few screams when she surprised people, which she felt bad about, but she did her best to keep out of the way of anyone else—no sense in startling random people if she could help it. Eventually she got back to her house, and fortunately didn’t run into anybody during the last half-mile of travel. The swarm of spiders started to teleport into the shadow under her bed, skittering out and gathering on her floor, until with a flicker of her power they turned to shadows that eventually coalesced into Taylor herself.

It was a good thing that Taylor didn’t really need to sleep anymore, she thought to herself as she sat back down on her bed. She still could, if she wanted to, but she usually only slept for three or four hours a night, and given that transforming into and back out of her swarm of spiders seemed to reset all her physical ailments including exhaustion, she didn’t really need to do it to begin with. After all, she was starting at Arcadia tomorrow, and it would be very unpleasant if her nighttime excursions impacted her education.

Chapter Text

Amy was exhausted when her alarm went off for school the next day. She flailed around with her hand for a while, trying to find her phone so she could shut off the annoying buzzing sound, and after a few tries she finally got it. The sound cut out and Amy collapsed back onto her pillow, looking up at the ceiling. She considered trying to fall back asleep, but she was too awake now—and besides, that would be an easy way to get Carol pissed at her and she certainly didn’t need to deal with that more than she already was.

Slowly, Amy dragged herself out of bed and over to her dresser. She threw on a basic outfit, jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt with a gray hoodie going over top that. Blinking blearily and looking at herself in the mirror, she ran a few fingers through her frizzy hair before giving it up as a bad job and slouching out of her room.

She barely responded to Vicky’s cheerful greeting when she slouched into the dining room, making a beeline for the coffee maker. She poured herself a large cup, leaving enough room to add the appropriate amount of cream and sweetener.

Vicky gave her a look as she sat down. “And are you having any coffee with your cream and sugar?”

Amy scoffed. “I’m bitter enough, I don’t need my coffee that way as well,” she muttered, before taking a large sip. She didn’t understand how her sister could drink coffee black, but then again she also didn’t understand how someone as perfect as Vicky could be a morning person. Truly, the mysteries of the world were endless.

“I heard there was an emergency last night,” Vicky said, tilting her head.

Amy shuddered. “Yeah, it was… God, it was a mess. Challenger got herself blown up by Oni Lee and needed emergency medical support. She was a few minutes from bleeding out when I got there, but healing her went fine. That’s when things went tits up, though, because she showed up.”

“She?” her sister asked, sitting up straighter.

“New villain,” Amy said, with a grimace. “No name yet, or at least not that I’ve heard. She had an army of these massive shadow spiders, and her body was like a fucking huge spider with a woman sticking out the top. And she’s a serious Brute, too—took out Carol and Aunt Sarah in like ten seconds. It was like she was taunting us, though. She said she had come for me, and then she walked right up to me and bragged about how I was helpless and unprotected. I just about pissed myself, especially since her form pretty much no-sold my powers.”

Vicky’s expression had grown more serious as Amy spoke, and now the girl looked frankly thunderous. “What the hell! Are you alright, Ames?”

Amy sighed. “I’m fine, Vicky. She didn’t actually hurt me. I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but she just teleported away right before Carol or Aunt Sarah could get back up. I’m pretty sure Carol’s gonna be assigning you, Crystal, and Eric to be my body guards for the foreseeable future though.”

“That’s a good idea,” Vicky said, nodding. When Amy shot her a glare, she held up her hands. “Look, it’s not that you can’t take care of yourself, but from what you said this villain’s got a strange fixation on you! That’s never a good thing, especially with someone as strong and unhinged as it sounds like this woman is!”

Amy deflated, a little. “Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though,” the girl grumbled. “And now I’ve got to go and do this stupid student ambassador nonsense, like I didn’t just get four hours of sleep.”

Victoria winced a little. “Do you want me to take care of it, instead?”

Amy felt more than a little tempted, especially since Victoria actually liked showing around prospective students. For Amy, it was just another bullshit aspect of being a public hero, but that didn’t mean she could just blow it off. If news got back to Carol, well, that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have again. Eventually Amy shook her head. “Nah, it’ll be fine. Apparently she’s transferring into my grade anyway, so they put us in classes together. It’ll be fine, Vicky, it’s just irritating.”

Her sister stirred her cereal absently, although it was mostly milk at this point. “Out of curiosity—do you know who’s transferring in?”

Amy checked her phone. “Taylor Herbert, or something. No wait, Hebert. She’s coming from Winslow, apparently—some kind of emergency transfer.”

“Oof,” Victoria winced. Amy agreed, personally, if only because Winslow had a definite reputation. “Hopefully she’s not part of the gangs then.”

“I doubt she’d be approved for a transfer to Arcadia if she was,” Amy said, with a shrug.

“Fair enough,” her sister said. “We’ll be taking Air Vicky Express in fifteen, yeah?” Despite her light tone, Vicky still looked concerned for Amy.

Amy rolled her eyes at the way her sister described flying Amy around, but she couldn’t help the small smile that formed on her face. “Sounds good to me. And I’m fine, I promise. Besides, I doubt that the Protectorate are going to be okay with a new villain threatening me, not when they need me to be their precious pocket healer. Odds are they’ll have spider girl locked up by next week.”

Her sister nodded as if in agreement, but the troubled expression never left her face. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” 

~*~

Challenger walked into the meeting room and slumped into a chair next to Assault. Her head was pounding and the overhead lights felt like they were stabbing into her skull, but she just shade her eyes. Honestly, she was still tired and more than a little hangry after last night, even after she’d gone to Fugly Bobs and devoured an entire Challenger Burger—named after her, which was honestly one of her greatest accomplishments as a cape. Panacea was a miracle worker, to be sure, and Challenger knew that she would have bled out without the girl’s help, but goddamn did it leave her hungry afterwards. And the girl couldn’t touch brains, which meant that she just had to deal with her concussion herself. Fortunately, her Brute power meant that what would be debilitating to most people was closer to a bad hangover for her, but that didn’t mean she was pleased about the whole thing.

Nearly the whole Protectorate membership had gathered for the meeting, save for Velocity and the newly graduated Triumph who were currently patrolling together and would have to settle for watching the recording afterwards. The adults of New Wave had arrived as well: Lady Photon and Brandish, unmasked in their tacky white bodysuits, along with Flashbang and Manpower. In addition to the capes, the PRT also had a presence with Director Emily Piggot, Deputy Director Rennick, four strike team leaders, three analysts, and a representative from Legal. The mood was decidedly grim, and Director Piggot barely waited for everyone to find a seat and sit down before starting the meeting.

“Thank you all for coming. I don’t like to have these emergency meetings except when they’re necessary, but I think we can all agree that this situation counts. Last night, Challenger and several members of New Wave encountered a new criminal parahuman, one who as yet does not seem to be aligned with any of the known factions. Now, I know you’re all busy people, so let’s not waste any time and just get into it. Armsmaster, what do we know about the new villain?”

Armsmaster nodded, standing with a faint whirr of servos. “Not as much as I might like, Director. We’ve assigned them the temporary code name Black Recluse, for their spider minions and their taciturn manner. Preliminary ratings are Brute 6, Master 5, and Mover 5.”

Dauntless spoke up. “That seems like several very high ratings,” he observed. “What are her powers like?”

“Black Recluse demonstrated control of over two hundred projections, all described as arachnid in shape and ranging in size from a few inches across to upwards of two feet in length. Additionally, she demonstrated a relatively quick teleportation effect, although the range is unclear at this time. Finally, she had strength enough to send Brandish flying with a single strike and the durability or regeneration to take one of Lady Photon’s blasts without showing sign of serious injury or impairment.” Everyone knew that he was more or less paraphrasing from a file that he had pulled up in his visor, but at least he’d gotten better about not just reading the file directly.

Challenger remembered the swarm very clearly. At first she’d just known pain and the chill touch of her death approaching, and then Panacea had been there and those sensations had just ceased like they’d never been there at all. Challenger had still been too weak to actually fight back, but she had seen the gangster raising his gun up and preparing to fire at her prone form. And then there had been a spider made of woven shade, looking so incongruous that she had thought it was a hallucination at first. But then the street had been flooded with shadow spiders, and there was a giant spider woman who skittered over to them and brushed aside two of the strongest New Wave capes with the ease of a child pushing aside cobwebs. The woman had towered over Panacea and Challenger, her voice distorted by the gas mask, and then she had just been gone, as if she’d never been there.

“She’ll be a real bitch to fight,” Challenger said out loud. “The Brute rating’s bad enough, when it let her no-sell two strong capes, but the teleport and swarm is really rough. It’d be like fighting a combination of Oni Lee and Crusader. And worse, I’m not sure if containment foam would even slow her down.”

That evoked a series of winces around the table. Both Oni Lee and Crusader were notorious for being some of the hardest villains to actually capture and contain.

“Do we know what she actually wants?” Assault asked, for once not interjecting with a quip or a joke.

Brandish was the one to answer, then. “She said she was there for Panacea,” the woman said, through clenched teeth. “She claimed that we were too weak to protect her, and then she said she would leave Panacea unharmed this time but that she would still be watching her.” Challenger, for her part, vaguely remembered hearing something along those lines, but her head had still been pretty fuzzy and her ears weren’t quite fixed up at that point. 

Director Piggot frowned, her displeasure an almost tangible thing in the air. “And do we know why she seems so fixated on Panacea?”

Brandish shook her head. “I have no idea, Director. I asked Amy and she couldn’t come up with anything concrete either. It could be someone with a loved one that didn’t get healed in time, or just a villain that dislikes the good that can be done by a healer. Without more evidence, though, all we have is speculation.”

“She stopped her from getting shot,” Challenger said, suddenly. Even through her headache, she could remember that clearly. “The first spider, it appeared on the arm of an ABB gangster right before he could fire his gun. The weight through off his aim.”

Assault was the one to speak next, his voice somber. “Some villains will chose a hero and then kinda, well, claim them, for lack of a better word. It’s kind of like a kid with a toy—it’s one thing if the kid smashes the toy or throws it around, but they’ll get mad if anyone else touches it.”

Brandish sat straighter, her eyes flashing. “Are you suggesting that this villain has, what, claimed Amy as their toy?”

“It’s possible,” the Director said, her face grim. “I’ve seen it before—there’s a Ward in New York, Flechette, who might get transferred here. She has a nemesis named March, part of the same Cluster apparently. A few months back Flechette was injured by a member of the Adepts called Willow Wisp, and March paid the other villain back by inflicting the same injuries twice over. And yet, March has put Flechette herself into the hospital on at least seven different occasions.”

Brandish seemed like she was about to say something further, but her sister laid a hand on her arm first. Instead, Lady Photon said, “I would like to avoid seeing my niece in that kind of danger, Director. Do you have any plans for capturing this Black Recluse before she can cause that kind of damage?”

Director Piggot gave the woman a sharp look. “The PRT will be treating Black Recluse in the same manner as any other independent villain. We will respond to the villain when she appears with the goal of arresting a parahuman criminal, and we will do our best to build a more comprehensive profile on her powers and motives. At present, however, the extent of Black Recluse’s known crimes are assault with a parahuman power. Moreover, that could easily be argued as self-defense given that, by your own admission, Brandish attacked the woman first.”

“After she threatened Amy!” Brandish interjected, standing up and shaking off her sister’s hand.

The director held up her hands in a calming gesture. “I’m not saying that you broke any laws, Brandish, merely that a competent lawyer might be able to argue that her words, despite the obvious subtext, were not explicitly threatening to your daughter. And I can’t afford to spare any resources to protect Panacea from a threat that may or may not exist. Maybe if New Wave was able to lend some of their capes to patrol with members of the Protectorate, I might be able to justify sending some support toward Panacea as part of a training exercise, but we’re stretched thin on the ground as it is.”

It was a somewhat transparent effort to get New Wave more closely aligned with the Protectorate and PRT, Challenger thought, and from Lady Photon’s frown it seemed the woman agreed. Personally, Challenger had mixed thoughts on the whole New Wave movement. On one hand, they were the only other capes who went around without a mask. On the other hand, their whole thing about not having secret identities was just kind of dumb. Challenger didn’t use a mask when she was out being a hero because Challenger was who she actually was—Jane Woodfellow, the mousy shut-in of a PRT junior analyst who had been badly disfigured by an acid burn a few years back, was just the persona she threw on when she needed to interact with somebody out of costume.

Predictably, Lady Photon said, “I appreciate the offer, Director, but I think that we’ll be handling Panacea’s security ourselves.” Her voice was cold, and it was clear she wasn’t going to budge.

Challenger raised her hand, drawing everyone’s attention. Maybe it was stupid to interfere in this kind of politics, but Challenger didn’t much care about who was pissed with her. “I’ll take a few shifts looking after her,” she said.

The director glared at her. “I can’t approve you taking that time out of your normal patrols,” the woman said, her displeasure clear.

Challenger met her gaze and shrugged. “Panacea’s the reason I’m still alive, Director. Least I can do is help her out if somebody’s gunning for her. And I never said I’d be doing it as Challenger.”

The Director’s brows raised up in surprise. “You’d watch her as a civilian?”

Challenger just shrugged. “Worst case, I gotta burn that identity and make a new one. I’ve done it before, it’ll be easy enough to do it again.”

Director Piggot just closed her eyes and pinched the brow of her nose. “I can’t control what you do in your personal life, Challenger. If you do blow your civilian identity, though, the budget for establishing a a new one is coming out of your paycheck.”

And yeah, that was fair enough. “Sure thing,” Challenger said, shrugging. The Director was certainly a bitch, and she could be creatively vindictive when it came to punishing her subordinates, but she had a sense of fairness, twisted though it might be.

The meeting continued for another fifty minutes or so, with some analyst diving deeper into what they new about Black Recluse’s power set, and some more back and forth between the Director and New Wave, but Challenger was only half-paying attention. Her head was still killing her and she had to close her eyes for a while to keep the fluorescent lights from stabbing into her skull. 

Eventually the meeting was finally over, and Challenger looked forward to going back to her shitty little apartment that could reasonably rented on a junior analyst’s salary, taking a couple tylenol, and passing out for the next day or so until her healing factor fixed up this concussion. Before she could go too far, though, she was stopped in the hallway by Lady Photon calling her name.

“Challenger! Wait a moment, please,” the woman said. Challenger turned to face the woman, who had stepped away from the other three members of New Wave.

“What’s up?” Challenger asked, leaning casually against the wall to mask the fact that she really just wanted to fall over.

“I just wanted to thank you for your offer,” the woman said, holding out a hand. Challenger shook it without pushing off the wall. “I know the Director won’t thank you for it, so I thought it was only right that I did. We’re all worried for Panacea’s security, and I’ll feel better knowing she’s being guarded by another hero.”

“‘S no problem,” she replied, shrugging. “I pay my debts, is all. Besides, I make it a habit to piss off the Director at least once a week. It’s good for her to get a little push back, you know? Builds character.”

Lady Photon let out a little polite laugh, as though she didn’t know how to handle that. Which, fair, most people didn’t really know how to handle Challenger. “Well, in any event, I’m sure we’ll take you up on your offer. I still have your phone number from the Silverfish operation back in October, if that works for you.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Challenger replied. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got patrol, but otherwise I’m happy to guard the girl.” She gave the other cape a two fingered salute and then sauntered off, doing her best not to show just how much she wanted to keel over onto the nearest couch and not move for the next twenty-four hours. Still, she was kind of looking forward to seeing Panacea again—the girl was grumpy and prickly, but more like a feisty kitten than anything else. And besides, Challenger was kind of looking forward to fighting against Black Recluse. Oni Lee was a bad match-up for her, but maybe the new terrifying villain would give her a more interesting fight.

~*~

Taylor’s hands clenched tight to the straps of her backpack—brand new, since her old pack hadn’t exactly survived the Incident. She felt nervous, in that kind of deep-seated way which had burrowed into her skin sometime last year and never truly left. As much as she tried to remind herself that this wasn’t Winslow, that Arcadia was different, she couldn’t get over the fact that she was going back into a high school. She had done her best to focus on everything that separated this place from Winslow: no peeling pain covered in tags and gang signs, no parking lot where weeds pushed up through cracks in the asphalt, and no floors that were covered with old gum and stains that had been sunk so deeply into the that they were never coming out. Still, it was unmistakably a high school, and Taylor had very bad experiences with those.

At least there weren’t many students here yet. She’d arrived fifteen minutes before classes were supposed to start, largely so she’d have time to familiarize herself with the layout of the building. Admittedly, she’d already scoped the place out a few nights back, sending her shadow swarm skittering through the building at around 3am, but that just told her the basic layout of the school. It hadn’t told her anything about which places people flocked to and where they avoided, what bathrooms might be safe, or which teachers should be avoided at all costs. That was the kind of thing she’d only get from observation and rumors, after all.

Right now, Taylor was waiting anxiously in the front office. The man working as the school secretary had given her a real smile when she’d come in and had been shockingly helpful when it came to getting Taylor her class schedule, textbooks, and (no don’t think about it) her locker number and code. He’d even told her to come see him or anyone else in the office if she had any problems, and she actually believed him. And now, apparently, Taylor was going to have a student ambassador who shared the same classes as her that would show her around.

It was all a little overwhelming, to be honest. The student ambassador was particularly frightening, because if that person decided they hated Taylor then she would be stuck with them all day. That was a terrifying thought, actually—it had been bad enough back at Winslow when she only had a few classes per day with the trio, after all. Not that she should expect some stranger to hate her on sight, but it was hard not to expect that at this point, and it took a concerted effort to push those thoughts down.

“Hey, are you Taylor?” a voice came from near her, sounding tired and almost monotone, but not cruel.

Taylor turned and holy fucking shit that was Amy Dallon right in front of her what the fuck. She stared up at the other girl, seeing her tired eyes and adorable cheeks dotted with freckles like so many stars in the night. Taylor made a sound that could charitably be described as a ‘meep.’

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “You are Taylor, right?”

“Uh, yup. I mean yes, I am she. I mean, she’s me. Er, I’m Taylor.” The words all came out as one long jumble, twisted up, and immediately afterwards Taylor felt her face flame with humiliation. She slammed her hands over her face. “Oh my god just kill me now,” she said quietly. There was a snort from nearby and Taylor flinched. 

“Hey, I’ve been there,” the other girl said, not unkindly. “I’m Amy.”

“I know,” Taylor said almost automatically, and then she smacked her forehead with her hand. “Sorry, I’m sure you get that all the time. I don’t want to be a creep or anything, just… you healed me last month.”

At that, it was Amy’s turn to flinch. “Oh. I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.”

“No, wait, I wouldn’t expect you to! I’m sure you see so many people and it’d be stupid to expect you to remember everybody, I just…” Taylor paused, forcing herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She looked down at her hands, not able to meet the other girl’s eyes. Okay, maybe she hadn’t been prepared for this exact eventuality, but she’d certainly thought a lot about Amy and what she might say if she ever ran into the girl. Eventually, she found the words she’d been looking for. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m a massive fan, but I’m sure that’s not what you want to deal with at school. I promise I won’t bring it up again, honest. You just caught me off guard.”

Finally, she forced herself to look up and make eye contact with the other girl. Amy looked a little pissed off, her button nose scrunched up just a little, but it was hard to tell if she was mad at Taylor or the situation or if that was just her default expression. Even her angry expression was cute, which was just so not fair. The girl seemed to be debating what to say, and Taylor couldn’t help but feel her nerves ratch up even more. After a moment, the healer sighed and said, “I try to keep that stuff separate from my life, but I get that we’re public figures. Just don’t ask for me to heal someone or for an autograph or something, and we’ll be fine.”

“I won’t! I promise,” Taylor said, and she really meant it. For one thing, she didn’t have anybody that she needed Amy to heal—her dad was in good enough shape, and Taylor could always just regenerate herself if she needed to—and she already had an autograph from Panacea (okay technically Taylor had the medical release form that had been signed off by Panacea but she was counting it). “Can we, um. Start over?”

Amy gave her a wry smile and held out one hand. “Yeah, sure. I’m Amy, and I’m here to be your student ambassador.”

Taylor took it, trying very hard not to show just how affected she was by holding the hand of the girl she loved. “I’m Taylor. I just transferred from Winslow, so I appreciate you helping me out.” She might have held the hand just a hair too long, but she dropped it quickly and tried her best to look and act like a normal girl™.

“No problem,” the girl said, and even if Taylor was pretty sure it was actually kind of an inconvenience for the other girl, she did seem to mean it. “Alright, first class is Algebra II. All the math and science classes are in the east wing, for the most part, although chemistry’s got its own building ‘cause of the fume hoods.”

With that, Amy started to lead her through the school. Taylor followed behind, hunching over a little under the gazes of the other students. Amy was actually pretty good at pointing everything out, although she spoke in a bit of a monotone. There were some hints at a dry sense of humor that Taylor couldn’t help but find charming, like when Amy had described the cafeteria food as “mostly adequate, if your expectations are low” or the gymnasium as “the instrument of mandated pediatric exertion.”

It was clear enough that Amy was doing this largely out of obligation, but this was still the closest that Taylor had come to having an actual friend in a very long time—Julia’s fake friendship last Winter, right before the trio had pulled the rug out from under her, absolutely didn’t count. And Taylor probably wouldn’t have been able to trust anybody else, not right now, but… c’mon, this was Amy Dallon. It was Panacea, one of the most effective heroes in the entire country. Only the members of the Triumvirate could claim to have saved more lives, and they had been active for two decades to Panacea’s two years. If Taylor could trust anybody not to stab her in the back, it would be this girl. And she had done quite a bit of research into Panacea as well, both through normal methods and through her swarm. She wasn’t the kind of person to mince words—Taylor had seen her chew out a doctor after the man had dismissed a woman with fibromyalgia as having ‘purely psychological pain’. The tongue-lashing had lasted five minutes and had been absolutely scathing. Amy wasn’t the kind of person to string someone along, if she didn’t like them.

And maybe, just maybe, if she played her cards right and wasn’t a complete mess of a human… this was a chance. She could protect her love from the shadows at night, sure, and she had been content with that. But maybe she could have more than that. It was hard to hope, but once the seed of it had taken root she couldn’t shake it. As she settled into the Algebra II classroom, shying away from all the stares and stumbling through a quick introduction, she found her eyes drifting back to Amy. Yes, this was a rare and fateful chance, and she would do everything in her power to keep it from slipping out of her grasp.