Warlord

Chapter 3

"Can't you take out S-class threats, why are you following me?" Bug girl didn't say much, but after a few days she finally had something conversational to say.

"I get emotionally attached easily, and you were there on my first night out. I tried hunting Ziz and I think she's hiding from me. All the other S-class threats are too hard to find or in Nilbog's case could release a plague, and my power doesn't cover plagues. Which would probably cover Bonesaw too, but I could unmake her entirely, Nilbog has minions and that makes it hard to ensure I've gotten them all before they try something."

Her bugs reacted to the first bit immediately. Unfortunately I'd yet to decipher what movements translated to what feelings. Still she responded, "Emotionally attached?"

"Yup, it doesn't help you're adorable. You've got grumpy little sister energy and if you triggered as a teen then that means you probably have a shit life, and if I can make it a bit better by hanging out with you and keeping you safe while you work out your stress on valid targets, then all the better."

Halting mid step she turned to look where her bugs knew I was levitating. Her bright yellow lenses looking scary but with my fear suppressed my brain registered it as cute. "What do you mean triggered?"

Oh, oh she didn't know about… I mean sure it was hard to find online, but it's not completely suppressed by the government… well I did frequent anarchist internet spaces so that probably impacted the info I got.

With a sigh I landed beside her and revealed myself. "So you know how you got powers on the worst day of your life? That's triggering. Powers come from traumatic moments that haunt you for the rest of your life."

Something about how her emotions finally poked up out of her power broke my heart. Because I knew saying that meant she was remembering her own trigger. Knew I just made her relive it. It broke her, just like mine broke me.

"Oh."

"Yea, kinda messed up right? So I see someone who didn't even make it to adulthood before going through that, and I can't help but want to give her a friendly face and some back up, and moral support. Because-" I choked up a bit. I suppressed anxiety and fear pretty well but sad? I couldn't do anything for sad. I knew as I looked away that a tear slipped out down onto the lip of my mask. "Because I never had someone show up and help me despite wanting it so much, someone to just give a shit. Someone who could actually help. Even if only just to listen. So I wanna be that for you."

Bug girl stayed quiet for a while, her head lowering and glancing off to the side while bugs found a new emotion to skitter too. "It was the second worst day of my life." She took a deep breath. "Sorry its uhm…"

"If you want to tell me go ahead, if you're not ready yet, we've still got an hour before I need to crash."

More of her body language emerged from the swarm. Actual emotion though still somewhat dissociated. "There’s three girls at school that had… have been making my life pretty goddamn miserable. Doing pretty much everything they could think of to make school suck, humiliate me, hurt me. Each of the three had their individual approach, and for a good while, it was like they were trying to outdo each other in how creative or mean they could get."

"Fuck bullies." I half snarled.

The bug girl's eyes searched my expression as she awkwardly swayed on her feet. “It went on for almost a year and a half before things quieted down. Last year, around November, they… I dunno. It was like they got bored. The pranks got tamer, then stopped altogether. The taunts stopped, and so did most of the hate mail. They ignored me, left me alone.

“I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I made a friend, one of the girls who had sometimes joined in on the taunting came to me and apologized. Not one of the major bullies, more like a friend of a friend of the bullies, I guess. She asked me if I wanted to hang out. I was too gun-shy, told her no, but it got so we were talking before and after classes and eating lunch together. Her approaching me and befriending me was one of the big reasons I could think the harassment was ending. I never really let my guard down around her, but she was pretty cool about it.

“And for most of November and the two weeks of classes before Christmas break, nothing. They were leaving me alone. I was able to relax.”

It took everything I had to suppress my rage. I could read between the lines. What happened next. The betrayal. Reality itself subtly broke and reknit itself around me.

She sighed, “That ended the day I came back from the winter break. I knew, instinctually, that they were playing me, that they were waiting before they pulled their next stunt, so it had more impact. I didn’t think they’d be so patient about it. I went to my locker, and well, they’d obviously raided the bins from the girls bathrooms or something, because they’d piled used pads and tampons into my locker. Almost filled it.”

"They didn't. She didn't." My voice not but a whisper.

"She did. It was pretty obvious that they had done it before the school closed for Christmas, by the smell alone. I bent over to throw up, right there in a crowded hallway, everyone watching. Before I could recover or stop losing my breakfast, someone grabbed me by the hair, hard enough it hurt, and shoved me into the locker.”

“They shut the locker and put the lock on it. I was trapped in there, with this rancid smell and puke, barely able to move, it was so full. All I could think was that someone had been willing to get their hands that dirty to fuck with me, but of all the students that had seen me get shoved in the locker, nobody was getting a janitor or teacher to let me out.

“I panicked, freaked out. My mind went someplace else, and it found the bugs there. Not that I knew what they were, at that point. I didn’t have a sense of proportion, and with all the info my power was giving me then, my brain didn’t know how to process it all. As far as I knew, all around me, in the walls of the school, in the corners, and crawling around the filthy interior of the locker, there were thousands of these twitchy, alien, distorted things that were each shoving every tiny detail about their bodies and their fucked up biology into my head.

She sighed again, “It’s hard to explain what it’s like, having a new sense open up, but you can’t understand it all. Every sound that they heard was bounced back to me at a hundred times the volume, with the pitch and everything else all screwed up as if they wanted to make it as unpleasant and painful to listen to as possible. Even what they were seeing, it’s like having my eyes open after being in the dark for a long time, but the eyes weren’t attached to my body, and what they were seeing was like looking into a really dingy, grimy kaleidoscope. Thousands of them. And I didn’t know how to turn any of it off.”

“When someone finally let me out, I came out fighting. Biting, scratching, kicking. Screaming incoherently. Probably putting on a good show for all the kids that had come out of their classrooms to watch. The teachers tried to deal with the situation, paramedics eventually came and I don’t remember much after that.

“I figured out what my power was at the hospital, while they observed me, which helped ground me, make me feel sane again. Bugs are a lot easier to wrap your head around, when you realize they’re bugs. After a week, maybe, I was able to shut some of it out. My dad got some money from the school. Enough to pay the bills for the hospital stay and a little extra. He was talking about suing the bullies, but no witnesses were really talking and the lawyer said it wasn’t going to be successful without hard evidence to identify the responsible. We didn’t have the money for it, if it wasn’t going to be a sure thing. I never wound up telling my dad about the main group of bullies. Maybe I should have, I dunno.”

Finally she looked back up to find me seething with rage on her behalf. "Please don't do anything to them. I-"

"They never stopped did they?" My words full of venom not for her.

Her body wilted, sheepish and small in a way the bug girl hadn't shown me before. "No. My so called friend stopped talking to me and didn't lift a finger when they continued." Her breath hitched. "Please don't kill them. Don't do anything, its my problem."

Pressing all my rage down I steeped closer. "I won't kill them, but something needs to change. You don't deserve what they're doing to you… May I hug you?"

Not willing to speak, bug girl nodded. My arms wrapped around her in a careful but tight squeeze. A moment later she hugged me back, slight and scared.

I whispered into her shoulder. "Bullies don't go away by leaving them alone. One way or another you gotta deal with them. I'll help. I've got a lot of power, money. The cops are scum but I might be able to bully the protectorate into helping if you want. Actually which high school is this?"

"…Winslow."

"I could tear it down at night while no one's there, make them send you somewhere else with a new batch of people. Give you enough money to get into Immaculata if you want." Another deep breath to calm myself. "Heck I could turn invisible and shadow you with a camera and you could get them to confess, then turn it into the cops."

She pulled back from the hug, bugs scampering about around her. "I don't want you to hurt them."

Clenching my fists a few times, all tension slowly left. "Look I'm angry on your behalf. They resorted to straight up torture, and I'm pretty sure the locker thing might be bioterrorism. However, they're teenagers, and I assume they aren't nazis."

Thankfully that got a head shake. "They aren't."

"Then I'm not gonna kill them, or hurt them. It'd probably get them blaming you with assault with a parahuman power. But I might protect you sneakily, making them trip, softening blows. But you'll still have to goad them into a confession." I summoned a camera in hand. My power's perfect memory for matter to remake was convenient even if it didn't extend to any other part of my memory. "How about I do the shadow thing, and I give you the money so your dad can try and get you into Immculata. One of them has to work, right? Heck I can duplicate their phones and maybe steal any incriminating texts. In case they delete them when the police come knocking."

Behind those yellow lenses I saw what I could only call hope. Hope that things could get better. It died a moment later. "Maybe but Emma's dad is a lawyer."

"Then I give you money for a better one. Heck I'll rob a bank if we need to."

"Please don't rob a bank."

"The FDIC insures every account up to two hundred thousand dollars, the bank has its own insurance for theft, and the money ultimately only hurts the rich folk who have shares with it. Did I ever mention I was an anarchist?"

That got a deadpan look from the teen. "You have an anarchist 'A' on your dress and an anarchist slogan on the back of your jacket. The whole city knows."

"Good. So want to rob some nazis before bed? It sounds like I'll have to get up early tomorrow."

"The nazis you've been killing behind my back?"

"It is public knowledge that I am executing every member of the Empire I come across. If they didn't want to die they could stop being bigoted fascist assholes, or leave."

Somehow that didn't convince bug girl but she rolled her eyes and kept walking on patrol. Her bugs found a stash house that night that we liberated. Myself invisible to not link her to me. Bullets halting in midair before they dropped dead. One bug girl safe for school tomorrow.

I left shortly after, letting her keep all the money after I called it in.

Time to get up early to go back to high school.

Yay me.

—

So conveniently enough I knew what bug girl looked like under her outfit despite her not having told me who she was. According to her bullies her name is Taylor, or Hebert. That meant keeping an eye on her with the camera wasn't impossible, especially since the ceilings were high enough to avoid physical contact.

The bullies made themselves known pretty quick. On girl using spit balls, another verbally abusing her with her dead mom, the last getting physical and wow fuck this school, all these kids watched and didn't speak up, the teachers didn't say a damn thing.

Worst of all there were nazis but they were children. I wouldn't kill children but fucking nazis.

Still the camera watched. I felt bugs bump into me and Taylor knew I was here watching, and thus tried a few times to goad them into confessing. Some of it was close but not quite direct enough. Either way the video evidence was growing, the trio weren't subtle.

At some point I used my power to whisper in Taylor's ear to try and get the teachers to admit they saw what was happening. Some try hard named Mr. Gladly apparently tried to talk to the teenage cape after class and she accused him of covering up the bullying and he fucking victim blamed her.

"Wow fuck him." I whispered into her ear and she smiled a little. "Want me to cut his break lines later?"

"Please don't." She said after stepping away from the jerk.

"You know I was a little joking before when I said I'd tear down this school for you, but I'm not joking any more, this place is a trash fire. Like where is all the funding going because it's not into the school." Clarendon wasn't great but this? Winslow was somehow worse than its reputation as the worst school in the country.

"It can't be that bad." Oh you sweet summer child.

I sighed. All my noises turned into soft sounds just for her. "I went to a normal high school and yes this is beyond abysmal. Those girls are patently psychotic. The teachers are apparently complicit with attempted murder. This isn't a high school it's a nightmare parody of one."

Taylor kept quiet after that, and I let her go about her day. A day that included another attempted murder in the form of Sophia tripping her down the stairs while a dozen kids watched. I made her invulnerable as she tumbled, it still looked like it hurt but I rendered the whole fall harmless. Not that the video would show that.

"She just tried to murder you. Falling down the stairs is often lethal."

Surrounded by people not caring she got up and continued moving on to her last class.

The day really couldn't have ended soon enough. She got on the bus and went home and that's when I realized I'd followed her home. So since I knew her civvie identity I decided it was only fair to share mine. Removing my stealth and cape costume I appeared in all my pale skin, black dress but more goth and less anarchist punk, lots of jewelry, a black cardigan, less stompy boots glory.

Something that Taylor immediately noticed. "You followed me home?"

"Well you needed the video right?" I wiggled the camera in hand. "Also hi I'm Aster, and in a week the guy I paid will have created a new identity for me under that name since I can't use my old one anymore."

"Why not?"

"Shapeshifting. This isn't what I originally looked like. But it's how I've always seen myself." That earned me an appraising glance. Then I created a duplicate of the camera and held it out to her. "This is a copy of the camera. I made sure I was invisible and silent to it so no one should know how you got it. Though you should only show that to the lawyer you got." she took it from my hand as I continued, "I don't think that Emma's confession was direct enough for a clean cut court case but a good lawyer could still argue it. However you'd probably want more examples if you wanted to nail her and Madison, Sophia on the other hand, uh she attempted to murder you and the nazi sympathizing cops aren't going to let her off the hook… and now I feel dirty just saying that, I really need to kill more nazis."

That earned a groan and a frown. "Thanks." And then after a moment she added, "Do you want tea?"

"No thank you. But if you want to sit and drink I can summon up my own stuff. Or I could take you out to eat if you want, I do have money and I think you deserve something nice after putting up with them." I flashed her a grin. "Let big sis Aster take care of you."

Then I finally realized what I saw in the basement. "You've got a lot of black widows down there."

"… lets go out to eat."

"Fugly's?"

A grunt of approval and we were off. We made it out the doorway before I noticed her walking off towards the bus stop. "Taylor wait!"

"What?"

"It's faster to fly there."

The twinkle in her eye at the mention of flight was perfect. I scooped her up into a princess carry and threw up my stealth. "Ready to fly?"

She nodded and a moment later I took off gently. My power shielding her from the wind, and temperature changes as I soared over the city. The teen watching the city pass under us, from behind her glasses. After only ten minutes of sightseeing flight I landed us in an alleyway close enough and we walked the rest of the way.

"I wish I'd gotten the power to fly." She whispered definitely not intending me to hear it with my noise filter.

Still we ordered and ate quietly. The girl seemed a bit thing, not dangerously so like I used to be but enough that binging on a greasy burger wouldn't ruin her. Besides curves were great! I gave myself some nice ones after all.

Finishing my own I threw up a privacy noise filter and asked, "So what's it like to control bugs?" She almost had a mini heart attack before I clarified, "Privacy filter, no one can hear us." And then raising my voice to a shout. "ANYONE HEAR THIS?"

Taylor looked around and found not a single person look our way. Then her eyes rose to a glare, but spoke. "It's like controlling your arm, they're just a part of me, I always know where they are in relation to me. I can feel through them, feel their own bodies like they do, know and use their own bodies intuitively."

"Yea but I've also seen you control a bunch doing completely separate things at the same time, are you multitasking or is that like you set a command and they follow."

Poking at her fries she took a bite before answering. "Both, but mostly the multitasking… I can keep track of everything all at once, and split my focus easily."

"That's OP as shit. You control hundreds of thousands of bugs."

That massive claim received an eye roll from the teen. Maybe I wasn't the best one to call her out, but her brain got upgraded so much she could split her focus a million times over casually. Seemingly done with my pokign she poked with a question of her own. "What's your power?"

Ah the question I'd been looking forward to. Not necessarily from her, but from someone I could trust. Welp time for my big reveal. Flashing her a grin I rested my chin upon my hands. "Oh its actually really really simple. I have absolute perfect omnipotence and omniscience within like fifteen feet of myself."

She blinked owlishly, pausing for a moment as the words sunk in. Taylor knew what the words meant but they still took a lot to process. Sure enough her mouth started to hang open, eyes growing wide. "That's OP as shit."

"Hell yea! Why do you think I told the Protectorate that I'd love to spar with the triumverate, and was planning to kill the endbringers? Anything within my god aura is completely at my mercy. Well…" I trailed off. That wasn't quite true. Sure the power and awareness were there in their limited range but I had one real drawback. "Okay maybe not completely. I have limits even within my space." Taking a few fries in hand I stuffed them into my mouth.

"Like what?" It was weird feeling the totality of her focus when her focus encompassed so much more than anyone else could ever hope.

I scritched my cheek, looking down. "Well, my power enhanced my brain a bit to be able to handle all the uh bullshit I can do… but it didn't actually make me smarter. Like I can't split my focus like you at all. I'm actually uh…" No ableism brain. Don't you dare! "I'm a dumb bitch, and had brain disabilities before I got powers."

"You're…" Wow I could practically see the word on the tip of her tongue. At least she had the common sense not to use it. "Disabled?"

"In a few ways. I've got really bad anxiety, like can't go outside bad." My eyes glanced over the semi-crowded public restaurant we sat at a booth inside of. With my aura I watched Taylor's gaze momentarily follow mine. "My power lets me control everything within my aura, my own body included. I've got a bit of my brain constantly focused on regulating a lot of anxiety related stuff. Not true split focused, it's more like… like you're doing your best to keep your arm still because it hurts to move."

With a deep breath I added, "And its not just the anxiety, that's just the one I'm basically constantly at war with. Autism is difficult. I can't social right, and at this point I don't really pretend to try. Like I can't follow most conversations. This little back and forth of you info dumping to me, and then me info dumping to you is the closest I can get to genuine conversation. And of course then there's the ADHD and wow my impulse control is abysmal. My ability to focus is actually worse than a normal humans. My attention span drifts from thing to thing and I get lost in my head a lot and choosing to do something is often nigh impossible. Executive dysfunction is the worst. Imagine sometimes being a prisoner in your own body but it's not a master, it's just you're brain simply developed some bad neurological pathways when you were in the womb."

The fries beneath Taylor grew cold. My rambling haven stolen her apparently massive focus away from her own food… or maybe she just wasn't hungry anymore. Either way she was left without words. Heck she was a teenager she likely didn't understand that kind of psychology stuff. Heck many psychologists didn't and it was their job.

That being said I watched her focus split into the infinite hive of her power leaving her own body one node in a sea of a thousand selves. The girl contained multitudes, and somehow despite life giving her very valid reasons to become a school shooter she ended up just wanting to be a hero and save others despite her not believing she herself could be saved. I could relate, just a little, to having the idea of shouldering the worlds burdens be easier than dealing with your own mess.

My mind then pulled around to remembering the whole thing we'd done earlier, with her school. Taylor needed a solution but that needed to be her decision. Ultimately I refused to take choices from her. It went against everything I believed in. That being said I could give her the choice. "So what did you want to do about your school? Might need to try to get the confession again, and a full confession if you want to go the legal route, but you'll need to tell your guardian." That earned a wince. "Otherwise I can tear down the school and the city can find you a new place with people sane enough to look at what those three are pulling and put a stop to it. That's assuming you all end up at the same school again."

She stared at her hands a minute. "Is it bad I want you to tear down my school just because I don't want to tell my dad?"

"Yea, that's… why don't you want to tell him?" If that fucking bastard was abusing her, he'd regret it.

"Ever since mom passed away he's not really been present. I didn't want to add to his burdens and I hid more and more until I couldn't tell him anything anymore."

"Question, what do you think he'd do if you told him everything?"

Apparently that question took a lot of thought. She practically froze as her emotions vanished from her body. "He'd try to help. Get mad at Emma which would destroy his friendship with Mr. Barnes. He'd feel so betrayed I kept it all from him, but he'd do everything he could to try and fix it. Maybe even pull the shotgun out."

That got a smile from me. A pseudo absentee parent yea, but sounds like he actually cares. More than I could say about my family. Problem was him rushing in and trying to do things seemed… it bothered Taylor. Something about it rubbed her wrong despite it sounding like a dream come true to me. Must've been a specific trauma hang up of hers.

"How would you want him to handle it?"

Her mouth opened and hung there for a minute. "I don't know."

"You don't want him to handle it…" the words placed the thought on the tip of my tongue. "You want to handle it yourself. You want to be in control?"

"I guess yea I do."

"I can definitely respect that. So think on it, but you have good solid options now to end the bullying, please please take one. I'll do my best to help."

We got up not long after and I flew her home. The questions and the revelations clearly on her mind. Taylor was smart, but she had a lot of baggage for a softmore, heck she was what fifteen? Way too young for this.

After that I fucked off. My brain overloaded to the extreme end. I'd need to take the night off from our usual stuff, but I'd try to be there in the morning. Be there for her school.

My apartment turned into a den of blankets pillows and sweet silence and stillness, the moment I entered. My power turning my whole domain into a safe space to decompress. I needed my ridiculously overpowered power, if only because with anything less I'd probably be dead. Not from Lung or the nazis, but from me.

I was my own worst enemy.