This one needs some background, as it is somewhat AU...

Things worked out quite a bit differently in some ways to canon due to some fairly small changes that kind of butterflied a bit. Appropriately enough... :D

Annette lived, Lung fucked up big time and took Kaiser down with him, the ABB collapsed, which means Bakuda and Oni Lee aren't an issue, and because of the whole process that led to Lung fucking up, Emma and Alan were never in that alley to be attacked by the ABB gangers. So Emma didn't meet Sophia, who in turn got lifted by the PRT rather earlier than in canon, before she'd managed to cock things up as much as she would have done, and became a reluctant Ward without needing Alan on her side to keep her out of jail...

Taylor obviously went to Arcadia and this time Emma put in the effort to follow her friend there, which she managed to pull off. Winslow is no longer a stain on the face of Brockton Bay either, which is one good outcome of Lung losing the plot. Sophia gets shoved into Arcadia with the rest of the Wards, and told extremely firmly to put on her A game and not fuck up.

She fucks up. Of course.

Sophia being the ray of sunshine she is, she decides that a little recreational bullying is a good stress relief method, and in the process of this comes to the conclusion that hassling Taylor Hebert is a stunningly cool idea. This ultimately leads to her engineering a situation that bears some relationship to canon, although it differs in the details. However, it was amply trigger-worthy and so Taylor gets the gift of trauma and super powers.

This time, though, there are other Parahumans within range, and QA gleefully helps herself to useful additional input because this is obviously going to produce some really good DATA. And it helps what she's already decided is Best Host.

Taylor gets something very close to her original abilities, but somewhat better, as they include not only arthropods but a lot of other 'lower lifeforms,' and of course she gets all the multitasking. That's QA's thing after all. But within the relevant range at the time of the Trigger were Panacea, Kid Win, and Gallant.

So she also ends up with a variant on Shaper's life sculptor functions, a level of Tinker ability linked to the same concept, both of which work very well together and link up nicely with QA's default skillset, and a Thinker ability which helpfully enhances the synthesis of those three power sets.

And, as a somewhat unexpected bonus, all this gives her a much deeper link to QA than even QA expected, to the point that the Shard is finding the whole experience nearly as strange as Taylor is, but both of them are also very satisfied with the outcome. And because of this, Taylor isn't nearly as affected by the 'conflict drive' thing, which means that she's been contented to stay out of the Caping lifestyle and just quietly explore her abilities. QA is finding the DATA produced exceptionally high grade and is completely content with the arrangement...

But that doesn't mean that both of them aren't perfectly happy to experiment when they finally work out what to have a go at :)

Then Taylor runs into a curious mantis, one thing leads to another, QA suggests a few ideas too, Taylor's hobby of reading science fiction among other things might have popped up some other ideas, and before you know it...

Lots of excessively intelligent insectoids with a distinct bent towards the technical skills and far too much enthusiasm. And a Hive Mother who is fine with this :D

Some may in future point to this as the point that things started to spiral rather out of control. The Hive considers this to be the point things got interesting.

Also, as a background thing, Sophia and a number of others got expelled on the spot because Arcadia, unlike Winslow, is a competent school and doesn't tolerate 'pranks' that many would call 'attempted murder,' the PRT gets shouted at a hell of a lot and so Sophia is no longer involved in the story, the Heberts get a pretty decent payoff from both the PRT and Arcadia, and apologies from both, and the PRT gets a sufficiently black eye for their part in it that they decided to stay as far away from the Heberts as possible because Danny Hebert holds a grudge, and Annette Hebert makes him look positively forgiving. And knows people who spill the beans on just who Sophia really was...

I feel that this will not be a particularly serious story, but it should be fun. We shall see.

The chapters will generally be fairly short, in all probability, but that is subject to circumstances and the phase of the moon. This is how it works.