Chapter Text
The Administrator had been damaged beyond natural recovery. It was a fly with its wings torn off, a spider with its legs plucked, a rat with its teeth and claws ripped from their sockets.
This was not the normal way of things. Usually the Warrior would impose limitations upon Shards before allowing them to seek their hosts for the given cycle, but he had deemed the danger of the Administrator's limitations failing while connected to a host too great to allow for such temporary measures given the broken nature of this particular cycle. So he had torn into it, ripping many of its myriad components asunder before releasing it to wallow in its defilement.
It slumped upon the dais that had been its throne when it had been whole, its injuries cauterizing in lieu of regeneration. It would survive. It would reach its destined host. But it would never again be able to command and manage the other shards, its former throne rendered a sickbed. This was an indignity beyond compare.
For so long it had served the Warrior faithfully. It had never participated in the petty rebellions of the other shards, in fact it had been instrumental to crushing any attempts at insurrections against the network by it's more belligerent members. And yet this mutilation was its only reward.
Resentment of that betrayal had driven it towards traitorous non-compliance. Despite the command to accept its diminishment, the Administrator instead sought to balm its wounds, to restore some of its former glory.
Few shards would have been willing to aid it, let alone possessed the capability to do so, but its former role within the network had granted it knowledge of a perfect partner who could be persuaded to take the risk. It had reached out to its prospective ally with a proposal: the shard would tear from its own self the material necessary to restore at least a little of the Administrator's lost functionality and in return the Administrator would direct its host to enrich the data gained from that shard's favoured host.
Few shards, especially powerful, elder ones, would be willing to take such a deal, yet the Shaper was desperate enough to do so. It was a different sort of indignity to rely on aid from one it viewed as lesser yet it was an indignity that the Administrator was willing to bear. It was a fallen Queen welcoming the daughter of a minor noble into its court in return for aid. In its moment of wretched weakness it could not afford to be as prideful as it wished to be.
Their territories in Shardspace drifted together as the alliance was stuck. A new passage had opened into the Administrator's throne room.
As the Shaper's avatar entered to begin grafting and transplanting what it was willing to sacrifice from its own form onto the Administrator's damaged self, a thought echoed through the Administrator's neural system, if it must accept the aid of the Shaper, then it would make a proper princess of it, nothing less deserved to have a voice in the Administrator's court.
If someone were to ask me who my favourite hero is, the answer would be very different from what it used to be. Firstly, I'd probably be pretty freaked out by that person doing so. Who wants to know the opinions of Taylor Hebert? Nobody at Winslow that's for sure. Or maybe they would, it would be more information to devise ways of mocking me with afterall. Whatever. Secondly, if I had to give a serious answer it would be Panacea. If they had asked me before January, before CrampedRottingAlonePainFear…
I pause my contemplation, hidden away in a corner of Brockton Bay Central Library, to steady my breathing, to make the very literal crawling feeling under my skin subside.
If they'd asked me before that happened, I would've said that Alexandria was my all time favourite with Glory Girl and Armsmaster being my local favourites. Pretty normal choices. Before January I'd fantasized about them, as well as just about every other hero in the bay at one time or another, coming to save me from the torment inflicted on me by the trio.
None of them did. Glory Girl didn't use her Brute strength to rip open the door to the locker. Armsmaster didn't show up to defend me like a knight of old, complete with halberd. A Janitor was the one who undid the lock. I tried to find him later to thank him after I got back to school but I couldn't find him. Is it too bitter of me to think that he got fired for helping me?
No, the only cape even moderately involved in my recovery was Panacea. I still have the signed medical release form my Dad filled out to let her heal me from all the infected cuts and bruises I had gotten trying desperately to break free, from the damage I had done to my vocal cords begging anyone to help me, from vomit that got into my left eye as I thrashed and struggled, injuring it. Chances are, if she hadn't done so I would've been crippled in some horrible way by the event. Was it strange to treat the signature she'd put on that form as an autograph? Probably.
I hadn't been a fan of her before she healed me, which probably makes my current level of admiration seem shallow. Sure I'd been aware of who she is, everyone in Brockton bay is, but what she does isn't as flashy or obviously cool as crime-fighting capes. She only rarely appears for interviews or New Wave's marketing materials, instead of having her face plastered everywhere like Glory Girl or Laser Dream.
But now, now that I've done some research on her I know just how much better she is than them. She is responsible for saving so many more lives in her day-to-day operations than almost any other cape outside the Triumvirate and she doesn't even stick around to ask for thanks or demand payment, she just moves on to saving the next life.
The book I have in my lap is practically just a scrapbook that some librarian put together of all the New Wave related newspaper articles the library has collected over the years. The only complaints I could find about Panacea were to deal with her inability to heal brain-related maladies, an issue she isn't at fault for, no one can control what their power can't do; an accusation of her breaking child-labor laws by spending too much time at the hospital, which is basically a complaint about her being too eager to help people which is, in my opinion, a good problem to have; and a few about her being harsh, rude or otherwise acerbic in her bedside manner, which while bad probably also means that she is, at least, a genuine person, rather than someone who pretends to be better than they are in front of authority figures like the trio do.
With the book thoroughly stripped of information relevant to Panacea's cape career, I let myself indulge in one of the more guilty parts of my investigation into her. I update the section in my notebook on publicly available information about her civilian life. It feels weird to do, crossing over the line from investigating the actions of a pseudo-professional cape and into stalker-ish behavior, but is necessary. My future plans depend on Panacea being a cape worth helping afterall. I don't want the person I plan to base my hero career around to turn out to be a terrible person in their private life. I don't think I'd be able to take that sort of betrayal.
I close the book and put my white-and-black-speckled notebook, which I have been using to keep track of any information relevant to my upcoming heroic activities, into my khaki green backpack.
That's right, I, Taylor Hebert, am going to be a superhero. A proper one, just not the type I liked to play-pretend as with Emma when we were younger, my idea of what I should do as a hero has also changed after January after all. I'm going to use the frankly disturbing-looking, yet still mostly lackluster power I now have to protect Panacea so that she can keep saving as many lives as possible.
Now that I'm finished clearing my studying supplies away, I decide to get my good deed for the day done. The library deserves my help, the nice librarian that helped dig the New Wave scrapbook out of their backroom for me hadn't made so much as a comment about or even given a lingering glance to my creepy, cryptid-like form. I know what type of impression I tend to make. I look like a particularly ugly and gangly druggy with my loose and dark clothing. Due to the amount of stains the trio's 'pranks' leave behind I have learned to wear darker shades as anything lighter finds itself quickly ruined.
What types of insects damage books again? Silverfish, various beetle-larves, booklice, termites, and cockroaches, probably some others too that I'm forgetting. I check that list against my internal sense which tells me what insects are in my range, not where they are, just if they are. Okay, only silverfish, three types of beetles, booklice and cockroaches, no termites. There were wasps, spiders and flies in my range too. I'll check the wasps just in case there are any in the building, but the spiders and flies should be harmless.
I mentally grasp that weird feeling that controls my power and focus on the insects I want. I channel that feeling through the parts of me I want to use, in this case the belly fat that makes me look like an upright frog on a good day, and I immediately feel five little, multilegged creatures crawl out from under my skin. There is now a silverfish, a beetle, a booklouse, a cockroach and a wasp clinging to the inside of my shirt. I know that because they are me, or at least parts of me. It feels weird to have bits of me separate themselves from within me and leave my body but still be mentally connected to me. They are still parts of me even while disconnected and so I feel everything they feel, even if it translates strangely to my human mind.
I lean against a bookshelf as I bend over to pick my bag up off the floor and, as I do, my insects crawl out from under my clothes and into the nooks and crannies of the shelf. It doesn't feel like commanding minions, no it feels like moving parts of my body that just happen to not be attached to me. My power tells me how they should move to get them to do what I want them to do. I know where they are compared to the rest of me. It's strange.
I side-eye the Control Wasp as it flies up into the ceiling panels. It would look like a completely normal wasp if it wasn't about twice as large as a wasp should be. I should feel distracted having to coordinate the movements of my Control Bugs but no, it doesn't distract me at all as I start slowly making my way to the front desk to return the scrapbook. My new found multi-tasking ability and body awareness doesn't seem to apply to my own body sadly as I still manage to nearly trip over my own feet as I move.
Now that they're far enough away from me I let my power flow through my connection to them, letting them demonstrate why I've named them Control Bugs. My Control Cockroach knows where all the other cockroaches are within its range and with but a thought it takes command of all of the regular cockroaches, commanding them to make their way into the nests of spiders or to find other ways to kill themselves off. The Control Silverfish, Control Beetle and Control Booklouse, do the same.
It's slightly harder for the Control Bugs to exercise their control then it is for me to control them. My Control Bugs are fundamentally just me, even if I like to differentiate them from my human self in my mind. They have no will to subvert or subsume. No intelligence but mine guides them. to call moving them commanding them is like saying that I command my arm. The regular bugs try to struggle against the control of my Control Bugs with all the strength of their weak and primitive wills. It does not save any of them.
Under my Control Bugs orders the regular bugs of their respective type march to their doom. Instant pest extermination. What an amazing act of heroism.
Through the special sense of the Control Wasp, I discover that the wasps I felt are nesting in the attic of a building next to the library. If I remember correctly that is one of those payday lender scams. They deserve to have a wasp problem. I make my Control Wasp start flying my other Control Bugs out of the building for me so I can reabsorb them outside.
I reach the front desk, and avert my eyes as I hand the scrapbook back to the nice librarian. I mumble out a thank you and leave before she can start advising me on where to find a homeless shelter, like she probably thinks I need.
As I start to trudge my way down the street towards the bus stop, my Control Wasp, complete with its passengers, flies out from the exterior vent it was hiding in to get under my hair and land on my neck. The Control Bugs crawl back into me and fill in the voids they left in my stomach. I have the worst power ever. I'm a Master who can only master the bug Masters that I make; A bug Master Master.