Author's Note: I know another crack pairing. Anyway, please check out the cover art and the aesthetics that I made for this story. The links are in my profile!

Taylor softly taps her booted foot on the pavement. She knows that her patrol partner hasn't arrived yet just base from the bugs that she placed in various locations within her five block range. She can sense her bugs surveying the area for potential threats and detecting her partner's arrival. So far, she hasn't sense Lux Noctis presence yet, her cape partner who often has the tendency to arrive late and also has the ability to produce light and darkness combo to surprise her on occasions.

Taylor's partner abilities kind of reminds her of Grue's, but that's where the similarity ends. Other than being habitually late, Drew Robertson is also a peace-loving man and prefers to have Taylor - the Queen of Escalation as he likes to call her - to do most of their work during confrontations with local and minor Villains in Quebec.

At eighteen years old, Taylor already considered joining the Chicago Protectorate after graduating from her days as a Ward in her original timeline. However, she was not given this chance when she encountered a Villain sometime in June 14, 2013.

She briefly remembers how it happened. The day had been raining when she had a confrontation with a villain cape named Displacer, who had the ability to send people anywhere through a portal of his own making. Despite her cautiousness and her incredible reaction times, she experienced a minuscule lapse of judgement, which resulted in her being pushed through the portal where she ended up displaced from both her time and original location.

Nevertheless, Taylor has to grudgingly admit that if it wasn't for Drew's assistance on her first week here in this time period and location, Taylor Hebert is certain to have ended up completely homeless and jobless in this strange territory.

Fortunately, she met the breaker cape on her fifth day during her wild goose chase for a possible portal to her original time and country. However, luck was not on her side when she realized that she might need more time, information, funds and other resources to get back to where she came from initially.

Thus, she didn't hesitate to accept the man's generosity when Drew Robertson; a somewhat well-known cape in Quebec and a trusting man who is willing to assist her with her problems. She recalls how the man himself obtained all the necessary documents and new Identification for her after she agreed that she would pay him back once she joined the Quebec Protectorate. Well, their plan went off without a hitch and Taylor soon found herself being introduced as a new hero named Swarm, albeit unoriginal, but it will do for her current situation.

Now, she is stuck in the year 1988 and in a different country. Thus, Taylor Hebert has to adapt and learn more about getting back home. Although she can't do that without earning money and gathering more information about the other portals located nearby, which appears to be an extremely rare possibility.

Apart from that, she also uses this opportunity to work with the other capes in the Protectorate to pay Drew Robertson back. As the hero Swarm, she is somewhat surprised to discover how the Quebec Protectorate doesn't hesitate to send newbies in dangerous operation like what is going to happen tonight. Apparently, a night raid in a sex trafficking den is going to happen shortly after sundown, which is going to be led by the Quebec Protectorate leader Cipher and the Ward leader Red Hellion along with most of the experienced Heroes.

She knows the exact mission parameters she is required to do tonight, where she is only delegated to search and rescue. As the hero Swarm, she understands that her bugs will be extremely useful for this entire operation, to search for victims and help them out of the building with Lux Noctis as her back-up.

Taylor was still thinking about the coming night raid when she senses her bugs suddenly detect movements within her five block range. For the moment, she sees nothing unusual as she stands there in an empty alleyway, where her partner had asked her to meet. It's just an hour before sunset and Taylor knows that it's almost time to meet the rest of the Protectorate capes.

If only my partner will arrive soon that is...She thinks in agitation. Where the hell is he?

Not a second later, Taylor senses when her bugs zeroes on a moving figure. She instantly allows her mind to delve into her swarm, where she can clearly see her partner making his way towards her location.

Finally! I thought I was going to wait for an eternity! She inwardly grumbles. Why does he always have to be so late?

She just hopes that Drew Robertson will stop making her wait for him.

Taylor doesn't wait long before she sees the auburn haired man come into her view.

"Ready for the night raid Lisa?" is Drew's first question the moment he enters her visual periphery.

Taylor still feels a little bit uncertain for using her friend's - Lisa's - first name in this timeline. However, she knows that she doesn't have a choice on the matter. Either Taylor uses her full name or create a new identity for herself. So Taylor opted the latter and chose the name Lisa Laborn.

If her friends find out that she is using both their names without their consent, they will probably say something about it. Although she is certain that Lisa and Brian will both understand in the end.

"I've been ready before you even arrive," comes Taylor's sharp retort while she gathers all her bugs within her range.

Drew finally comes to a complete halt in front of her, where she shortly notices how his black and white armor seems to be gleaming beneath the fading light. Apart from his gleaming suit of armor, it seems that the man has opted for a helmet instead of the usual domino mask he usually wears, which is something Taylor finds more practical considering what they were about to do tonight. However, she decides not to comment on her partner's outfit preference.

Meanwhile, Taylor is wearing the same costume she arrives in. She wears the same light grey spider-silk bodysuit with dark grey armor panels. In addition, she also has her flight pack and other familiar equipment like her handgun, taser, pepper spray, and of course, her trusty nano-thorn knife which was made by Defiant. However, as the hero Swarm, Taylor decided to create a new emblem for herself on the scarlet cloth she hang on her belt. This time, instead of an image of a upside-down beetle, she chose the image of a bee. A Queen bee to be exact, which is also the reason her partner keeps on calling her 'Queenie' to her mounting annoyance.

"Well, if that's the case...shall we go then Queenie?" Drew asks after a short while wherein Taylor simply ignores the nickname.

"Yeah, let's go or the rest of the Protectorate will be irritated with us for being late," she tells her partner without disguising her displeasure. "So we better hurry up!"

"Jeeez Lisa, stop being such a worrywort. I'm sure the rest will understand the reason we are late." Drew states as they begin to move away from their rendezvous point.

Taylor decides not to say anything else after that since she knows there is no point in reasoning with the red-headed man.

I don't even know why we had to meet at this place, when we could just meet at the location where everyone else in the Protectorate are going to have a short debriefing before the raid. Taylor thinks in annoyance. Or maybe Drew was just simply testing my patience by making me wait for him here, which might be another possibility. Either way, I'm done waiting for the redhead slowpoke. If he ends up lagging behind me during the mission, I'm not going to wait for him at all.

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"I said hurry up Lux!" Taylor orders loudly to her partner a little later in the middle of the Protectorate raid. If she hadn't offloaded most of her emotional response to her bugs, Taylor is certain that she would be mildly panicking by now at the dire situation she finds herself in.

"Use your Light to cover us while I search for our exit! Blind those damn pursuers, Lux!" are her next commands.

"Copy that Swarm!" comes her partner's yell from somewhere further behind her as Taylor and the rest of the people she rescued runs down the long corridor.

Taylor catches a glimpse of the terrified expressions from the rescued victims running with her, but decides to ignore their obvious fear in favor of deploying her bugs ahead of her. The buzz of insects immediately drowns most of the noise as her swarm spreads out.

She understands that most of the rescued victims are still too weak due to the drugs that they still had on their system and Taylor tries her best to allow them to keep pace with her. However, this slow running will only have their pursuers gaining on them. Hopefully, Lux's abilities will be enough to give them time to escape from the building.

Due the crisis she is facing and with other people depending on her, Taylor is able to extend her power for another block. Now, she has control over most of the arthropods within a six-block radius. As she continues to run, her mind processes and sorts the signals from her bugs which are still searching for the possible exit.

In that moment, Taylor is too preoccupied with her bugs that her fast reflexes nearly made her stab a tall, teenage boy with her nano-thorn knife when the idiot suddenly grabs her arm without warning.

"Don't surprise me like that!" Taylor snaps angrily at the boy while she tears her arm away from his grip. "I could have stabbed you with my knife if I reacted fast enough! Why did you even dare do such a thing?!"

The unknown boy looks somewhat apologetic for his abrupt actions.

Despite the sudden distraction, Taylor does not stop running through the corridor while she leads the rest of the rescued victims to somewhere safer than their previous location, where most of the fighting was thick.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to get your attention." The dark haired boy explains while he keeps up with her pace. He appears to be no older than she is, probably still seventeen years old and one of the victims of the sex trafficking ring.

Taylor should feel sorry for the boy for snapping at him. However, she is too occupied in trying to get them out of there alive that she couldn't care less about how the boy feels at the moment.

"Don't you see that I'm trying to search for our escape out of here?! I can't afford a distraction right now!" She tells the unknown boy in irritation. "So don't you dare grab me again!"

"I know you are here to rescue us, but can't you at least listen to what I have to say?!" the boy says to her just as annoyed.

As Taylor turns to glare at the boy, she nearly stumbles on her feet when she finally looks closer at his face. She can clearly see the reason why the sex traffickers would take him. The teenage boy was quite handsome. He was more than that actually with a much taller frame and apparent muscular physique. Probably good enough to serve some Master who is willing to pay for his expensive price.

However, that isn't the reason Taylor has to do a double-take on him. It's mainly because the boy had such familiar features with shoulder-length black hair and emerald green eyes that Taylor feels like she's staring into someone she recognized, but vaguely doesn't remember whom it is.

"Now that I have your attention. I have a suggestion for you." The boy says as he runs beside her and Taylor decides to give the boy the chance to speak his mind despite her irritation. "Why don't you use your bugs as some kind of decoy to send at different directions? This will help in confusing our pursuers and they can become a successful visual impediment if properly instructed. And since I figured that you can only use a few of your bugs to search for an escape route, I think you are able to delegate most of your bugs for such a task."

For a moment, Taylor pretends that she is considering the boy's suggestion. However, the reason she did not create a decoy or some kind of impediment as the boy said was because she is purposely gathering and keeping most of her swarm in her range with the intent to use them against incoming enemies they might encounter as they escape.

If she allows most of her bugs to spread in different directions, there is a chance that her insects will be too far away that Taylor won't be able to call them swiftly back to her again. Apart from that, she had been keeping her bugs within her range because she could use them as an effective defense to keep enemies from attacking the people that she rescued.

The unknown boy had a good suggestion but she can't sacrifice the majority of her swarm to provide the decoy for them when she could use most of her bugs in preparation for an incoming attack to these defenseless people, which they will definitely need.

"You have a good suggestion, but I think it will be unwise in our current situation," is her answer as they turn into another corner.

"Why do you think it is unwise?" the dark haired boy asks.

Taylor allows herself to glance briefly at him and catches the boy's bright green eyes when she says to him, "It's because I know we will end up confronting these slavers. My bugs can see them everywhere and the only way we haven't encountered any of them because I'm stirring us in a direction where I can sense only three potential enemies. We can fare better with three hostiles compared to the six or five people I can sense moving within my bug's range. So that's why I haven't used the majority of my bugs as decoys because I intend to use them in this confrontation."

"Are those three people capes?" The boy asks her with a calculating look in his handsome face.

"Possibly, I can't be for sure. However, if they are capes, I'm not going to let these three use their abilities because I intend to incapacitate them before we encounter them." Taylor assures the boy. "I've already sent some poisonous insects with the intent to render them immobile before we encounter them in a minute."

"A minute? So we are getting close to their location?" the boy inquires.

"Yes," Taylor replies while she senses the rescued victim's rising dread at her words. "Even though I have sent my bugs ahead of me to scout and disable the three enemies that we are about to encounter, I want you all to remember to keep back if any of them remain mobile and try to attack us still. Let me handle things if that happens, am I clear on that?"

Taylor asks the terrified people in a loud and calm voice. She does not look around her to realize that they are all depending on her to survive this dire situation unscathed.

"We understand," it is the unknown boy who answered for the majority of them. "We won't interfere in your fight with the other capes if it comes to that."

"Good," is Taylor's grim words as she gradually slows down. The people who are following her do the same where they come to a complete halt around her.

"I can sense the three capes up ahead." Taylor informs the people she rescued in a calm but strong voice. "Two of them is swiftly reacting to the poison that my black widow spiders have injected on them. However, I can't say for the third man. He seems to have some kind of resistance to the poison. Since I sense our escape route just ahead of us, I have to take this last enemy down before we can move forward. However, for me to do that, I have to leave you all here while I confront this last opponent…"

Taylor looks at each of the frightened faces around her before her gaze finally lands on a pair of bright emerald eyes. The unknown boy stares back at her with a look of understanding and Taylor knows that she can rely on him to keep the rest calm while she fights the enemy.

"I know you are probably terrified, but I promise you all that I will come back and lead you all out of here alive. So I ask that you all wait here while I take down the last enemy…" She says to the assembled crowd.

Taylor watches as the people around her simply nod their head or mutter something in agreement. Not wanting to waste any more time, she turns to the tall, green-eyed boy and says to him, "And I trust that you can watch over them while I'm gone for a short while?"

"Yes, definitely," comes the boy's immediate response.

For a brief moment, Taylor allows herself to scrutinize the boy's handsome visage rather closely and wonders what is it about him that she finds vaguely familiar.

"I will be back soon," is her last statement as she turns around and walks towards the location of her adversary. But not without leaving some of her bugs behind to watch the people she rescued.

"And we will be waiting right here. So kick that sonofabitch's ass and come back!" Taylor hears the boy calls after her and she can't help but smile in amusement at the boy's words.

Even though she doesn't know the name of the boy, but Taylor likes his calm attitude in the face of danger.

The unknown boy will make a good Hero material if he happens to be a parahuman.

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Taylor's fight with the cape Amalgamation flies in a blur. The main reason that the cape did not succumb to the poison from her black widow spiders is because the man had developed a tolerance for most poisons in years after he informed her. Furthermore, she also discovered that the man is apparently both a brute and shaker with incredible regenerative abilities.

So after minutes of fighting, Taylor is already suffering from a broken arm after the man managed to go pass her defenses. She also receive a stab wound to her thigh when Taylor finally defeats him by sheer ingenuity alone. Thus, when she gets back to the rescued victims, and the unknown boy, it's been nearly fifteen minutes and they were clearly beginning to worry that they had nearly sent 'green-eyes' to find out what happened to her.

"You're hurt!" is the first thing she hears from the people she rescued, but she easily dismisses their concern.

"I will be fine. However, we don't have time to linger much longer. We need to get out of here at once," Taylor tells them firmly, despite the fact that she tries to hide her injuries.

"So let's get moving before we encounter any more hostiles once more." She continues in a loud and commanding voice. She observes how the people glance at one another before they nod their heads in agreement towards her.

With nothing else to say, Taylor begins to lead the people while trying very hard not to make her injury too obvious. Inwardly, she wonders what happened to her partner Lux Noctis. It's been nearly twenty minutes and she hasn't seen the breaker cape catch up to them at all. Even though she had offloaded most of her feeling of pain and other emotions to her insects, Taylor still can't help but worry for her partner.

She hopes that Drew is fine or she will have to come back and look for him once she finds a safe place for the people she had rescued.

"Hey, Swarm?" a familiar masculine voice asks and Taylor looks up to see the green-eyed boy walking closely beside her and looking at her in obvious concern. "I notice the hole in your suit...and I can see that you are clearly gushing a lot of blood from the puncture wound on your thigh, despite the bandage you placed there. Also, I know you are trying to hide your limp. I'm not that daft. So you might as well stop the pretense and let me help you. You are clearly in a terrible condition to walk and I don't want you to lose a lot of blood by leaning too much on your injured leg."

"Your are very astute, aren't you?" comes Taylor's wry response after listening to the boy's whispered observations.

"Yes, I am that…" is the boy's low answer while he gazes at her seriously. "As for you, I admire your strength and your ability to lead these people despite facing such odds. However, I do not agree with your determination to endure your injuries in silence and not ask for help when you clearly needed it. So I am offering you my assistance since I understand that you won't even dare do so with your own volition."

"And if I don't accept your offer for aid?" Taylor asks the boy while she finally stops hiding her limp. She asks the question more out of curiosity than anything else since she wants to see how the strange boy will react to her inquiry.

"Then, I will respect your wishes, although I might have to help you if you happen to end up on the ground in your own pool of blood," comes the boy's dry comment.

"Since you certainly paint a pretty picture of me regarding that possibility. Then, I might as well accept your offer," Taylor replies, unable to hide the sarcasm in her tone.

"I'm glad you see it my way," the handsome boy tells her, sounding more amuse. "Now, don't hit me or draw your knife on me when I wrap an arm around your waist. This is for you to easily put most of your weight on me when you walk. However, you also have to lean on me for you to do that."

"I understand," is her only reply while Taylor senses the people listening in on their conversation, but she decides to ignore them.

Not a moment after her answer, she feels the unknown boy wrapped an arm around her waist while he pulled her closer to his side. She instantly leans on him as instructed to stop putting weight on her injured leg. Even though she is taller than average, the boy appears a head taller than her since the top of her head nearly brushes against the boy's jaw.

"Now, all you have to do is survive the ordeal of walking out of here. And if you faint on me, then you have to pay me a generous sum for carrying your unconscious figure to safety." The boy tells her.

Taylor glances at the boy walking closely beside her and notices the hint of laughter in his emerald eyes.

Clearly, the boy has the time to jest even after what he had gone through in this terrible place. It seems the boy has a will of steel and the optimism of a thousand undying suns. Or this is simply a facade to hide his true emotions. Either way, Taylor doesn't mind the boy's attitude, whether it be true or false.

For this reason, Taylor can't help but give the boy a smile when she realizes that she won't mind spending in such a dire situation with someone like him.

"I'm sorry…I should have asked this before, but may I ask your name?" Taylor finally asks the unknown boy.

"Yes, you may...My name is Nikos Vasil, but you may call me Nikos…" comes the boy's response while he continues to support her.

The moment she hears his name Taylor nearly stops breathing. She would also have stopped walking if not for the future supervillain prompting her to move forward with his arm still wrapped around her waist.

Well, shit! I've been talking to Heartbreaker all this time! The effing Supervillain who has a harem of beautiful women who will do anything for him! Her mind mentally supplies rather vocally while she walks beside the teen Heartbreaker like a complete automaton.

However, as Taylor dimly recalls Alec's story regarding his father. She does remember him mentioning that Heartbreaker came into being at around 1990, when Nikos Vasil's Master power ultimately warped his mind so badly that it drastically changes his personality and his perception on people.

So that's two years from now! It means that this Nikos Vasil hasn't triggered yet! Oh, thank the gods! Taylor thinks in complete relief.

"Swarm?" the boy - the future Heartbreaker - says softly.

"Yes?" Taylor manages to say in a neutral tone. She is somewhat glad that she has insects to unload most of her emotional baggage because she definitely won't remain calm when she realizes that the future Heartbreaker is currently walking beside her with his right arm wrapped around her waist.

"Perhaps once this is over, you can tell me more about being a Protectorate hero."

"Why do you want to know?" She says, glancing at the boy with undeniable interest. The boy's request looks innocent enough, but she can't be sure for certain considering that she is currently talking to a future supervillain.

"Because I realize that being a Hero is something I want to do," the boy admits, to Taylor's utmost shock. "Other than that, watching you in action makes me see someone I want to look up to…Despite not knowing all of us, you are willing to risk your life to protect us and that really struck me deeply. You are truly an inspiration. Your strength, determination and fearlessness in battle are something that I want to see in myself as well... I want to become someone many will know. Perhaps all throughout Canada or even the United States... Unfortunately, I'm not a parahuman...regardless of that I'm not going to lose hope...Somehow, someway, I will find a way to become a Hero like you…"

There is a short pause before the boy speaks once more what's in his mind with words that completely astounds Taylor.

"So after listening to all of that...I am sure that you might consider me as your personal fanboy now..." The future Heartbreaker states in a joking voice.

For a moment, Taylor allows herself to gather her numb mind.

Did - did Heartbreaker just said that he wants to be a Hero like me? And that he's now my personal fanboy?! She thinks faintly after listening to the future supervillain's words.

However, it seems Heartbreaker is not done speaking or making a jest.

"So Swarm...may I ask for your autograph after the raid is entirely over?"