288Taylor lay back on the ground and closed her eyes. The sound of insects and birds around her was soothing, as was the light breeze in the grass and bushes. For a moment, she was at peace.
That moment was shattered by the sound of a gunshot in the distance. The girl sighed, wishing that people would stop being such shitheads to each other.
Unfortunately that didn't seem likely to happen, at least without a lot of effort. Her own life was proof enough of that.
Her mind drifted back to the worst day she'd ever had, a few months ago just after she'd started at Arcadia High School. The fallout of what that horrible girl Sophia had done was still rumbling on in more places than you'd think plausible. How someone like that could have gotten accepted at Arcadia was a mystery, unless you knew certain critical facts most people weren't aware of.
If it hadn't been for Winslow, undoubtedly the worst school in the city if not the state from what her Mom said, being destroyed when Lung and Kaiser got into it last fall, that Hess girl would probably have ended up there. It was apparently full of people like her, violent and unpleasant. Luckily she had the grades to have never been at risk of going to the place, and now that it was rubble, no one had to go there.
Pity about the four teachers that had died in the process though. She'd heard rumors that they weren't very nice people, especially the principal, but she'd certainly never know for herself. And, of course, Lung had managed to get a kill order on himself for that, which despite his reputation had seen him flee the country within days, and Kaiser was in the Birdcage.
That had sure changed the gang situation around the place overnight, she knew, although there were still way too many idiots with guns, or super powers, or super powers and guns, to make it really a safe place. But she like so many others was used to that sort of thing and just lived with it.
Sometimes Taylor wondered if other cities had people who barely even noticed a bullet whining past from some distant crime in progress…
"Taylor? Where are you?" her mom called. She lifted her head and waved an arm rather lazily.
"Down here," she called back, not opening her eyes. It was far too nice a day to bother with getting up in her opinion.
Footsteps on the grass approached, a familiar tread that made her finally turn her head and look. She smiled at her mother as the older woman held out a glass. "Lemonade?" she asked.
"Yes, please," Taylor replied, sitting up and accepting the glass. She took a long swig from it and sighed with pleasure.
"Your dad will be home in about two hours and I need to finish baking your birthday cake, but I thought you might like a drink," her mom said as she also dropped to sit on the grass next to Taylor. "It's a hot day."
"It's a great day," Taylor grinned.
"How does being fifteen feel?"
"Like being fourteen but plus a year," she replied, laughing as her mother smiled. The woman leaned to the side and hugged her quickly.
"I'm glad you've recovered from the attack," she said quietly. "It's nice to see you happy like this."
Taylor sighed a little. "Sophia and those other girls got expelled, the school paid all the bills and gave us a lot of money, and I got better," she replied after a second or two. "It could have been worse. And it was six months ago anyway."
"Emma still wants to find Sophia Hess and break her legs," her mom commented with a small smile.
"Emma has a violent streak," Taylor snorted, smiling.
"You, of course, are entirely calm and placid."
"Of course. As far as anyone knows." They shared a look of amusement.
"I still can't believe what those girls did to…" her mom said a moment later. Taylor put her hand on the woman's wrist and squeezed it gently.
"It's over, Mom. It was…" She swallowed as she suppressed a very unpleasant memory. "...horrible, but it's over."
Stroking her hair, the older woman gazed at her. "Sometimes you really impress me, dear."
"What about the other times?" Taylor asked with an impish smirk.
"Those times are… unusual," her mom laughed. "But generally positive." She looked at her watch. "I have to get that cake in the oven. Don't get sunburned."
"I put sun cream on before I came out."
"When is Emma getting here?"
"Um… I think four or so?"
"And the others?"
"Probably a little later. Everyone should be here by five."
"Good." Her mom nodded. "Danny said Kurt and Lacey should be here about half an hour after he gets home, and Alan, Zoe, and Anne will turn up around then too. We should be ready by six at the latest." Hopping to her feet, the older woman smiled down at her daughter. "I think this will be a nice little party."
"I think so too," the girl replied, finishing her lemonade then handing the glass back. "Thanks, Mom."
"It's no trouble, dear." Her mom turned and walked away. Taylor watched her go, seeing that there was no trace of the limp she'd had for months after that car accident that could have been a lot worse than it was. Luckily the other driver had managed to nearly miss her mom's car, although he'd still made a mess of it. And her, of course. Her hip had taken a long time to heal properly and if it hadn't been for Panacea she'd still probably be limping.
Oh well. No point dwelling on things that might have happened in another life. She only had this one and it wasn't too bad, despite certain issues.
And the damned gangers, she thought with irritation as another gunshot sounded, further away than the previous one. She could faintly hear sirens in the distance, suggesting that the cops were sufficiently annoyed to be doing something about it. Hopefully they'd manage to get whoever it was.
Flopping back onto the grass Taylor closed her eyes again and just let nature do its thing around her, her hands digging into the grass as she pondered life and her position in it.
A little later something tickled her nose. Twitching it, she nearly sneezed. The tickle came back, finally prompting her to open one eye.
She got an extreme close up view of a tiny, inhuman, and obviously curious face. Relatively enormous faceted eyes met her gaze as the creature hanging from a long strand of grass that bent under the small weight to droop over her head from behind reached out one foreleg and tapped the end of her nose a third time.
Taylor grinned. "Hello," she whispered to the green mantis, which cocked its head at the sound and seemed to be watching her. Lifting a hand she extended a finger, the insect looking at it, then back to her face, before lightly hopping onto the digit. Tiny claws dug into her skin making her giggle. "You're very pretty," she said, admiring the creature, which was quite large for an insect at about four inches long.
It tilted its head back and forth, examining her with apparently as much interest as she was examining it. She got the impression of something a lot smarter than most people thought insects were.
Curiously, she extended her special senses towards the mantis. The susurration of life that surrounded her to a range of nearly half a mile faded into the background as she concentrated on the tiny creature sitting on her finger.
Human mind met insect mind. Both were intrigued.
"Oh, my," Taylor finally said as the mantis leaned closer to her and waved her, for it was a female, antennae at her in a friendly sort of way. "That is interesting, isn't it? So much potential…" She looked around a little guiltily, seeing and sensing that her mother was in the kitchen, and none of the neighbors were close enough to see into the back garden. She couldn't do much more than sense humans or most higher life forms, but that was enough to be very useful.
It was the smaller ones that were interesting, anyway. And where her particular talents, forged from a ghastly experience she tried not to think about, lay.
Taylor carefully sat up and moved a few feet to the side to lean against one of the trees that grew in the back garden, out of sight of the kitchen window. The mantis stayed on her finger the entire time, not showing any signs of wanting to fly away. When she was settled, Taylor went back to studying her new small friend.
They gazed at each other for some time, the insect and the girl examining each other with mutual interest. Eventually Taylor grinned slowly. "Why not?" she said to the insect, which twitched a wing case. "I can see some really cool things happening if we're careful. And I have to use this power for something useful sooner or later, right?"
The insect rotated its head nearly upside down for a moment, looked at her from that position, then moved it back. Taylor laughed quietly. "Glad you agree. All right. Let me think, then we'll do something neat. And don't worry, it won't hurt."
Very carefully going over in her head what she wanted to do, and feeling something very alien but very fond of her watching curiously while feeding her data, she finally made a decision and got to work.
Four months later, Armsmaster, the premier Tinker in Brockton Bay, came back from checking out a possible sighting of Hookwolf to find his prized motorcycle in pieces on the ground. He stopped dead in his tracks and gaped at the five foot tall insect-like creature, which was wearing a sort of vest festooned with small pockets out of which protruded all manner of tools and equipment, that was currently wielding a quarter inch socket driver in one forehand as it separated the power module from the engine of the bike.
"What the fuck?" he finally said, unable to think of anything else in any way appropriate.
The creature looked like a vastly enlarged and somewhat modified praying mantis, the size of a small human and a rather attractive cyan color as far as the exoskeleton went. It stood on four legs while four more limbs, the lower pair of which appeared to possibly be capable of doubling as legs as well, served as arms. The top set terminated in very dexterous clawed fingers which were using the tools with clear expertise. A somewhat heart-shaped head, with two enormous faceted eyes and a pair of two foot long antenna, sat on top of a flexible neck. He could see how flexible it was by the way the thing was tilting that head to peer inside the power unit. Mandibles moved and a whispery voice said, "Inefficient, although neat and tidy."
"Excuse me?" he snapped at the comment, his indignation at the offense committed to his bike abruptly outweighed by the annoyance of the offense caused to his Tinker abilities. "The efficiency of that unit is within zero point six four percent of the theoretical maximum."
"Only if you ignore the fundamental design error in the phase transfer coupling," the insectoid replied, not looking up from where it was now prodding inside the power unit with some sort of test probe which was making intermittent beeping sounds.
"Fundamental design error?" he sputtered, stomping closer and slamming his halberd back onto his armored back. Folding his arms, he loomed over the creature which was still not paying attention to him. "What fundamental design error?"
"This design uses a six phase power conversion method, with resonant magnetics," the thing said, putting the tool back into its vest and removing a different one, with which it indicated a few components on the circuit board of the unit, now missing the cover. "Moving to an interleaved eight phase system with electrostatic coupling would nearly double the total power handling capacity while reducing the mass by at least sixty percent and the heat loss by nearly forty."
Armsmaster paused with his mouth open, about to say something in anger, then thought hard. "Ah… I see. You may have a point, interestingly."
"Obviously the circuit would require a higher Q than this implements to shape the waveform correctly, and I'd recommend an aluminum oxide circuit board with gold tracks to handle the power flow, but there's definitely room for improvement," the insect explained, pulling out a notebook and a pen with the two spare hands. It quickly sketched a design with a remarkable degree of exactitude, then tore the page off and handed it to him. He took it and examined it with great interest. The strange creature looked up at him for a moment, then started reassembling his bike at great speed as he thought over the suggestion.
By the time he looked up the thing had put his bike back together entirely, which made him stare in shock.
It cocked its head, made a gesture that somehow conveyed respect with all four hands, and said, "It was quite interesting meeting you, Armsmaster. Until we meet again."
It pulled a small device out of its vest and made a couple of quick adjustments to it, then added, "The hive mother will be wondering where I am, so I have to leave." Clicking a button on the small device, it waved then vanished in a cloud of special effects.
He spent some time staring at where it no longer was, before finally looking around a little helplessly. There was absolutely no sign of the thing, or for that matter anyone or anything else, within range.
Finally, with a sigh of confusion, he very carefully folded the piece of paper he was still holding and put it away in his armor, then got back on his bike.
It was only then that he realized the damned bug had stolen his spare halberd.
"Fuck!"
Emma looked at the scene, then turned to Annette, who was standing at the top of the basement stairs with her arm around her husband's waist. Both of them were also looking down at a view of something many people would find somewhat odd.
"This is weird, right, Auntie Annette?" the red-head asked, her voice confused. "It's not just me?"
"No, Emma, it's not just you," Annette sighed fondly. She moved a little to the side to let one of Taylor's insectoid friends squeeze past and go down the stairs. He flicked his antenna in a gesture of thanks, but had his hands full of technology, some of which looked suspiciously like something the PRT would be annoyed to have misplaced. The basement itself, which was rather larger than it should really have been, now extending much deeper under the back yard than before, was a hive of activity.
Literally, she thought with a certain sense of resigned amusement.
"A spaceship? Really?" Emma shook her head in wonder. "How did they do that?"
"They're very very smart," Annette replied quietly. "And very fond of Taylor. From their point of view she's their mother, after all."
Emma was quiet for a few seconds, then shrugged and ran down the stairs to join her friend and her friend's friends.
Turning to her husband, the woman said rather wryly, "I can't help feeling that we should probably have stopped this a while ago."
"Way too late for that," he chuckled. "Way too late."
"Hive Mother!" A whispery shout from behind them made both turn to see a familiar insect-like figure scuttle in through the back door. "I successfully acquired the target!" He ran between then and down the stairs, proudly holding up something Annette recognized. She started laughing, as did her husband.
"Oh, he's not going to be happy about that!" Danny commented with a wide grin.
"Serves him right, the egotistical twit," Annette sniffed. Removing her arm from his waist, she went on, "I'm going to make some lemonade. Who wants some?"
"I do!" cried about fourteen or fifteen voices, most of which weren't human. Smiling to herself, she raised an eyebrow at her husband, who nodded, then turned to go into the kitchen.
She hadn't planned on being a grandmother this early, nor had she expected grandchildren quite like the ones downstairs, and it had to be said she'd never thought she'd have so many of them, but there was no denying it made her rather proud.
Even so, she suspected that in the fullness of time some very strange things were going to happen around these parts...