Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tctctctctctc…”

Taylor’s fingers did a weird, creepy little dance on my arm, like they were trying to summon Satan through interpretive tickling. I tried not to pay attention because Pythagoras and his stupid triangle cult were refusing to make sense in my brain. I could’ve sworn I learned this years ago, but I probably deleted it to make room for Taylor’s bad roleplay ideas. At this point, my head was basically a junk drawer for her half-finished fanfiction.

Mr. Hallward was up front speedrunning the Pythagorean theorem like he was getting paid per syllable. Every five seconds he’d throw in a ‘you should’ve learned this already’, and—fair—he wasn’t wrong. But I was also too busy hiding behind my weird friend and her weirder habits. Coping mechanisms? Performance art? Selective schizophrenia? Hard to tell what it even was anymore.

“Tctctctctctc…”

The fingers crawled up my arm. Then down. My eye twitched.

“Tay,” I muttered.

No response. Just more ‘tctctctc’ and finger-scurrying that made me feel like a human violin.

“Taylor, please stop,” I said, trying not to laugh. “This is weird. People are gonna talk.”

The fingers froze.

“Don’t move a muscle, Emma,” she rasped in a voice that sounded like a dying lawnmower. “Don’t stand. Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe.”

I didn’t stand. I did blink. That earned me another ‘tctctctc’.

“I’m going to, like, die if I don’t breathe,” I whispered.

“You’ve got a brown recluse poised on your arm,” she said grimly. “Nasty spider. Nastier bite. Ever heard of necrotic venom?”

I risked a glance, not because I was scared, but because I was trying not to get detention. Taylor’s hand was doing an unhinged spider mime on my sleeve, complete with twitchy legs. It was nightmare fuel… if your nightmares were directed by a theater kid high on sugar.

“That brown recluse,” I began slowly, “looks a little pale. Maybe anemic. Definitely in need of vitamin D.”

Taylor hissed. Probably her attempt at sounding like a spider. It came out more like a cat having a stroke while munching on tuna. I bit my lip to stop from snorting.

“Your bullying stops today, Emma,” she declared. “I will use extreme measures if necessary.”

A lightbulb went off. I sighed.

“…Bullying. Bullying,” I repeated. “This is about me cleaning your locker, isn’t it?”

She hissed again. Mr. Hallward turned; I looked away, pretending I was deeply invested in hypotenuses.

“That locker was a biohazard,” I hissed back. “I found Aristotle’s Metaphysics buried under a half-eaten sandwich.”

“You filled it with all sorts of vile crap! You wanted to break me,” she accused. “But now I have power. This brown recluse—”

“Pale recluse.”

“—Light-brown recluse is just the beginning. Be glad I’m not summoning an ant colony down your throat.”

I stared at her. My eye twitched again.

“Wet wipes and makeup are not ‘vile,’ Taylor. They’re called personal hygiene. Self-care. You can’t still be traumatized by that.”

She stared at me over her glasses, a strand of wavy black hair falling across her face like she was a tragic anime heroine. Then she blushed. Hard. I held her gaze for a moment before her hand-spider resumed its horrifying ‘tctctctctc’ dance on my arm.

I soldiered on, raising an eyebrow. “Tay, you know I don’t judge. But that thing needed a deep cleaning.”

Her blush deepened. “You did it on purpose,” she accused. “You orchestrated that… that monstrous scene. Shadow Stalker was waiting like a panther, ready to humiliate me.”

“Shadow Stalk—” I started, then froze mid-smile. “—Sophia?”

Taylor’s eyes went wide. “Ah, shoot, that’s a spoiler, uh—”

“Taylor, please,” I groaned, massaging my face. “She literally walked by, gave you a pat on the back, and said ‘eat more.’ That doesn’t qualify as bullying. Also, stop calling people names.”

“It’s her cape name,” she hissed, the hand-spider clamping tighter. “She’s a parahuman. A hero… if you can call a creature like that a hero.”

I sighed. “Okay, fine. Sophia’s a hero.”

“Yes. A ‘hero’,” Taylor mocked, making exaggerated air quotes before the hand-spider reattached itself to my arm.

“She was just trying to be nice…”

“She triggered me.”

“You can’t get triggered from embarrassment,” I said flatly. “And she didn’t make fun of your locker.”

“My light-brown recluse,” she countered, flexing her fingers, “begs to disagree. I have the power to control bugs now. I’ll never be alone again like that day. You abandoned me, humiliated me, left me to rot. I lost my friend that day.”

I blinked.

“...You drama queen.”

“Tctctctctctc…”

I sighed. Rested my face on my hand.

“Would you like a Kit Kat? I can buy you a Kit Kat.”

The hand-spider froze. She stared at me like I’d just offered her immortality.

“I’m not falling for your tricks, Emma. If you think you can bribe me—”

“Two Kit Kats?”

Silence. She glanced down at her ‘light-brown recluse’. After a long pause, she gave a tiny, defeated nod.

“...Fine.”

Her hand-spider stayed firmly on my arm.

“Can you get the venomous spider off me now?”

“No,” she said instantly. “It’s for insurance.”

I opened my mouth, reconsidered, then shut it again. Smiling despite myself, I turned back toward the board. I had no idea what Mr. Hallward had been rambling about for the last ten minutes.

Taylor was weird. But she was my best friend. And, honestly, she was way more interesting than geometry.

Chapter Text

“…It’s not just about the stickiness, Emma. Spider silk has incredible tensile strength and extensibility. It can absorb a ton of energy before breaking. Did you know that, weight for weight, spider silk is about five times stronger than steel? And not cheap steel either – high-grade alloy steel! Plus, it keeps its strength from minus forty to two hundred degrees Celsius! And when exposed to water, it undergoes supercontraction, shrinking up to fifty percent, which can actually help re-tension the webs—”

“Kit Kat,” I said, snapping a piece off the bar and holding it out.

Taylor immediately leaned in and bit down with the single-minded focus of a starving cat. I tried not to laugh. Or melt. The level of cute was medically concerning.

“Ith alsho baodegrafable…” she mumbled, chocolate crumbs dusting her lips.

“Ah, ah, ah,” I cut in, wagging a finger. “The lecture on biodegradable spider silk can wait until you’ve finished your biodegradable snack. No talking with your mouth full, bug girl.”

A spectacular blush erupted across her vitamin-D-deficient skin. She tried to hide behind the curtain of her hair, a gesture only marginally less pathetic than being hand-fed in the middle of the hallway. Only marginally, though. If I had to endure the spider silk TED Talk, I was at least going to get some entertainment out of it.

Once she’d swallowed, she made a move to wipe her mouth with her hoodie sleeve. I intercepted her wrist, already producing a handkerchief from my back pocket.

“For the love of all that is holy,” I sighed, dabbing at the chocolate smudge. “Are you five? This hoodie is already a war crime against fashion. Let’s not add dessert stains to the list.”

She blushed harder, a feat I wouldn’t have thought possible. When I was done, she tried to salvage her dignity with a dramatic push of her glasses. The lenses flashed, obscuring the manic gleam of a fifteen-year old girl's gaze in her eyes.

“A minor stain is a small price to pay…” she intoned, her voice dropping to a theater-major-in-a-crisis whisper. “…For the sake of justice.”

“Justice. Uh-huh.” I folded my arms. “And what, exactly, does justice have to do with spider silk?”

“Hmph! Naïve as ever, Sergeant Barnes. Spider silk is biodegradable, biocompatible, hypoallergenic, and antimicrobial. Perfect for surgical sutures, artificial tendons, tissue repair! Can you even fathom the number of life-saving applications? No, scratch that – picture an armor made of spider silk! Bullet resistant! Flexible! Stylish! It could take a stab for breakfast and ask for seconds! The ultimate tool in the fight against crime.”

My eyebrow developed a life of its own. I tucked a strand of red hair behind my ear and tacked on a smile that felt like it might crack my face.

“Remind me,” I said sweetly. “What was the original topic of this conversation? I seem to have lost the thread.”

Taylor’s breath hitched. She let out a snort that she desperately tried to disguise as a cough, her ‘serious visionary’ facade crumbling for a split second.

“You were… explaining the benefits of exfoliation,” she recited, with a level of detail that was frankly insulting given the context. “And the proper order for applying base makeup and eyeliner after cleansing. Moisturizing and skin types were also covered. It seemed only fair that I explain my powers in return.”

My brain took a full five seconds to reboot. I could practically smell the smoke. I shook my head and held up my hands in surrender.

“Okay, no, time out. Let me see if I have this straight.”

Taylor leaned in, intrigued.

“Your power is to control bugs…”

A nod.

“…You do it with your mind, in a radius of… two blocks?”

“Approximately six hundred feet, yes,” she confirmed, pushing her glasses up again.

“Marvelous. And the bugs in question include spiders, centipedes, ants, butterflies…”

“Crabs, too,” she added, as if this were a perfectly normal inclusion. I chose to ignore that particular ecological nightmare and pressed on.

“So, to summarize: You can command a literal swarm. You can hide them under your clothes, make them engulf a person, and you’ve essentially conscripted an army of spiders into a silk-producing, eight-legged sweatshop for your personal use…”

Taylor listened, offering no corrections. Just a thoughtful, confirming silence and maybe quiet pride. I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or terrified. I smiled, feeling a muscle in my cheek twitch.

“You’re basically a Bug Queen.” I finally declared.

“…Yes,” she said, with tragic sincerity.

“And my power, according to you…” I said, feeling my face contort into a grimace. “…Is skincare?”

Taylor froze.

“…Very important skincare?”

She tried. I let out a sigh that melted into a laugh.

“Oh boy, I just can’t wait to aggressively moisturize the shit out of supervillains,” I said, matching her earnest tone. “I’ll throw them behind bars and make them look radiant while I’m at it.”

“W-Wait, that’s not—”

“No, no, I get it,” I cut in, clutching my chest dramatically. “Your power is ‘Bug Queen’. Mine is ‘pretty’. You’re the queen, I’m a face. Granted, a devastatingly beautiful face, but still just a face…”

Taylor looked like she wanted to crawl into her hoodie. Just as I was about to take pity on her, she pushed her glasses up her nose with a sharp click that was pure anime-finale intensity. She really had been binging too much of it.

“Your profound simplicity continues to astound me, Emma Barnes. It is a… trait I’ve learned to endure.”

I stopped dead. Felt a vein in my brow give a warning throb.

“Did you just call me basic?”

“Alas,” she continued, a newfound, terrifying confidence in her voice, “you remain blind to the true depths of your potential. You skim the surface, unaware of the abyss below. Do you believe I was always the ‘Bug Queen’ you see now?”

I turned fully toward her, hands on hips, lips somewhere between a smile and a threat.

“Girl, that’s just your self-esteem bullying you again,” I said.

Taylor made a strangled little noise. Something between a flustered ‘egh…!’ and a dying modem.

“Let’s be real here,” I went on. “There isn’t a person with a functioning brainstem who thinks controlling bugs is, I dunno, lame. You’re the wet dream of girls and arachnophobes and the shared nightmare of, like, sixty percent of the world. Do you know what that means? You terrify more than half the planet.”

Taylor’s face flushed a record-breaking shade of crimson. She let out a regal ‘Hmph!’ and tossed her hair back with far more grace than the situation deserved, crossing her arms.

“F-Flattery is a transparent and futile tactic,” she sniffed, voice wobbling. “Nevertheless! I shall reward your… initiative… by illuminating the nature of your gifts.”

She fixed me with a dramatic, piercing glare that might have been intimidating if I hadn't noticed her eyes doing a quick, furtive dip southward.

“…Stop looking at my boobs,” I said flatly.

“I w-wasn’t! I was conducting a somatic assessment!” she squawked before clearing her throat. “A-Anyway… your power isn’t just being pretty, not just about mere aesthetics. It’s about…. Production, yes. Crafting an image. Makeup, skincare, projection, appearance… making yourself appear inviting… someone who can pass by without turning a head. You could pass as anyone…”

Taylor snapped her fingers. I could practically see the light of a thousand-watt idea blazing behind her lenses. Or maybe it was just her eyes that went all shiny.

“I’ve got it! Don’t say anything, don’t ruin it, I’m connecting the dots…” she babbled, waving her hands as if I’d hex her. She took a breath, grinning. “Your power… is False Positive.”

My lips twitched.

“Oh? Sounds catchy. What’s it do, besides sound like a bad pregnancy test?”

Taylor gave a laugh that was about three parts genius and one part supervillain. She could probably make a Bond villain proud.

“False Positive—or Doppelgänger, if you’re feeling dramatic—lets you emit a large neuromimetic field that scans, replicates, and re-emits any person’s neural pathways and somatic signature. To every observer within the field, you don’t just look like the target. You feel like them, right down to their subconscious tells. Polygraphs would kiss your feet. DNA tests would call you ‘mommy’."

Taylor let out another ‘Hmph!’ and smiled devilishly.

“You are, for all intents and purposes, them. You can shapeshift into anyone so flawlessly that everyone else truly believes you are that person.”

I let out a low whistle.

“Now that’s cool. So I’m the ultimate infiltrator.”

“You are! It’s a total identity rewrite. People and even simple machines inside the field experience it too because False Positive actively warps their perception. It’s that deep.”

I leaned back, smirking at my adorably deranged friend.

“Isn't that a little broken? I mean, okay, you get a biblical plague, and I get… identity theft on a cosmic level. It sounds a bit unfair.”

Taylor blushed again, suddenly fascinated with her own fingernails.

“W-Well, you’re my best friend,” she mumbled, as if that justified handing me a creepypasta-level ability. “I’d never give you a sub-par power. Not even hypothetically.”

Her admission was so heartwarming and so utterly Taylor that I had to take a sharp breath to stop myself from scooping her into a hug.

I settled with a head pat. Taylor looked startled for a second but she leaned into it, eyes closing in bliss for a second. Then I retracted my hand and smiled. She smiled back.

“So, let's lay out the specifics. I could become… Danny?”

“Emotionally devastating, but technically, yes,” she confirmed, nodding eagerly.

“Sophia?”

“Sure, if you can manage the muscles and the glare.”

“And Genghis Khan? Or, say, Hitler?”

Taylor paused, her brain visibly whirring. Then she shook her head.

“You could force a patchwork of signatures, create something like them,” she granted, raising a professorial finger. “But it would feel off. Your target has to have entered your field at least once for a perfect copy. Without a direct scan, you’d just look like a very suspicious cosplayer. You’d be… uncanny.”

I gave her my best pout. “So no pillaging as a Mongol conqueror? No failed art career as an Austrian painter with a quirky moustache?”’

“No pillaging. No failed art career,” she confirmed, solemn as a priest trying very hard not to laugh. “Definitely no moustache.”

“Well, my dreams of world domination are officially crushed,” I sighed, snapping my fingers in mock disappointment. “And if the person I’m copying is standing right next to me?”

Taylor brought a hand to her chin, humming thoughtfully before her eyes lit up.

“It would be… really awkward,” she declared. “You’d be identical twins, but you wouldn’t have their memories. So you’d either have to bluff like a champion or just avoid the original like a weird, mirror-themed plague.”

I spread my arms wide.

“There we go! Now we both have cool powers. You’re the bug menace, and I’m sneaky-sneaky doppelgänger girl.”

“Yep!” Taylor chirped, already pulling out a battered notebook from her pocket. She began scribbling furiously. “That makes you a Stranger… Stranger 6, maybe. Oh, and a Thinker 3… for the analysis aspect…”

I watched her get absorbed in the notes. Then I decided to poke the bear, just because I could.

“Taylor Hebert,” I chided, placing a hand over my heart. “I am not a ‘Stranger’. I’m your best friend. I’m hurt.”

The effect was instant. She froze, fumbled, and clutched her notebook to her chest.

“N-No! That’s the classification! A capital 'S' Stranger! It’s for threat assessment and… ugh.”

She stared at me, utterly defeated and a tiny bit pleading.

“…I’ll make you an Excel spreadsheet later.”

I grinned.

“I’ll be waiting for it with bated breath, friend.”

Taylor nodded, smile returning, bright enough to power a small town. Before she could form a word, I offered her another Kit Kat finger. She leaned in yet again and munched on it like she’d just found religion in chocolate.

I let her nibble away… until she froze. Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. A low, continuous growl suddenly emanated from her throat, her teeth still clamped onto the Kit Kat.

I tried to tug the chocolate free. She growled harder.

“What’s that, kitty-bug?” I coaxed, summoning every ounce of willpower into not snorting like a hog. “Shhh. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Point to the big, scary thing and Emma will make it go away.”

Taylor growled for a few more seconds for dramatic effect, then snapped the chocolate off with a definitive crunch. She chewed slowly, swallowed, and—still glaring—pointed a single, accusing finger behind me.

“It’s him.”

I turned.

The school janitor.

I think his name was Jason. Or Jonathan. Something biblical. He had the silkiest black hair I’d ever seen on a man wielding a mop. It flowed down his back in a ponytail that deserved its own shampoo commercial. From this angle, I could also spot a goatee so precise it looked like he petted it lovingly every night. Or maybe just used a laser level for it.

He was wearing old, scratched headphones, maybe lost in a world of music while doing his job.

I raised a hand in a weak wave, let out a nervous laugh that sounded more like a choke, and looked back at Taylor.

“It’s… it’s the janitor, you goober.”

Taylor hissed like a startled cobra and ducked behind me. She gripped my shoulders.

I immediately stared at the ceiling tiles, sending a silent prayer skyward. God, if you’re taking notes on patience, this should qualify me for the Heaven VIP lounge. Front-row seat. Backstage pass too.

“Taylor Hebert,” I groaned after a moment. “You cannot antagonize the janitor.”

“I can and I will!” she rebutted, her voice muffled by my shirt, her hands fisting the fabric like a baby koala with a trauma. “Especially that guy. Just look at him, Emma! He has the vibe of a school shooter who got a plea deal!”

I sputtered, trying to twist around. She still had a death-grip on my shirt.

“Taylor!” I hissed, offering a pained smile to a group of passing freshmen. “That’s not even edgy, that’s just libel! The man is cleaning. He’s a pillar of the community!”

She squeezed my shirt so hard it was basically upgrading itself into a push-up bra. I gripped her wrist, finally managing to turn my head, and found her breathing directly into my ear.

“…Look at him, Emma,” she rasped in a voice that suggested a chipmunk who’d chain-smoked its way through a war.

“Get off my shirt,” I ordered, trying not to shiver. “I bought this in SoHo, you dramatic trash panda! You’re going to pop the stitches!”

To her credit, she eased the tension. Her hot, judgmental breath continued to fog my neck like some broken humidifier.

“Look. At. Him.”

Trapped in the grip of the human disaster glued to my spine, I stared at the janitor again.

“I am looking,” I said. “He looks very… janitorial. Cleaning the floor like some Johnny Depp-lookalike living off minimum wage. Probably listening to Linkin Park. He is, by definition, making the school less gross. What’s the problem?”

She hissed again. I resisted the holy urge to tickle her stupid.

“People said the same about the Austrian painter,” she explained with the calm certainty of a historian on crack. “That’s how it starts. ‘He’s just an artist, he’s just motivating the youth’. Next thing you know, he’s inventing stupid words like ‘blitzkrieg’ and committing crimes against humanity. You can’t trust the quiet ones.”

I felt a spiritual tremor, the universe’s urge to facepalm channeling through me. I took a deep, centering breath, which was mostly Taylor’s exhaled carbon dioxide and hot mouth-breath.

“Do you have a single, solitary piece of evidence? Anything at all?”

At that, Taylor released me. She spun me around so fast she nearly launched me into the stratosphere. Then she gripped my shoulders, her eyes narrowed to slits as she side-eyed her nemesis.

“Emma. I need you to listen very carefully.”

Her voice dropped an octave.

“That man,” she growled, “is wearing a ponytail.”

I swear I heard a fuse blow in my brain. Or maybe just a neuron attempting to escape my skull. My left eye began to twitch in a steady, Morse code rhythm of despair.

“Yes. He is,” I confirmed, voice flat.

“A man with a ponytail,” she said gravely, “is either a hippie… or planning genocide. That guy? He doesn’t look like a hippie. He doesn’t even look like he’s ever hugged a tree! Why would a hippie need a salary? What is he funding? Love and Peace? Please.”

I stared.

“Genocide,” I echoed.

Taylor gave a single, solemn nod.

“And you got all that because… of the ponytail.”

Another nod. Faster this time.

“That doesn’t—!” I started, throwing my arms up, before I wrestled my voice back to a whisper. “—That doesn’t make a molecule of sense, you absolute maniac.”

Taylor had the audacity to look scandalized, as if I’d just insulted a Nobel laureate.

“Don’t blame me!” she shot back. “You’re the one applying linear logic to a chaotic-evil mind! He doesn’t need to be understood, Emma. He needs to be neutralized.”

That was when she reached into her pocket… and began producing a cheap plastic spider.

“Nope. Absolutely not,” I declared, grabbing her wrist and wrapping my other arm around her in a tactical bear hug. “Off we go, bug girl.”

“No! Let me go, Emma! You don’t understand!” she cried, her limbs flailing, spider in hand. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions and SPIDERS! I will… I will save Brockton Bay—!”

She didn’t get to finish her manifesto as I started power-walking her away from the janitor, offering a strained, ‘Everything’s fine!’ smile to the utterly bewildered student body. I tried to ignore the stares, hauling the feral cryptid that was my friend down the hall, her shouting about spiders and justice.

“THE PONYTAIL IS HOW THEY GET TO YOU, EMMA!”

The janitor was still peacefully mopping the floor with headphones on.