Wow. I never expected such a huge response right off the bat, especially since Worm is so relatively obscure. I had my first review within hours of posting. I guess I'm really feeling the pressure to shart out more content, and quick. Some people mentioned the lack of shock Taylor felt from being plunged back in time. I hope this chapter addresses those concerns.

Sitting on the bus, reeking of vomit and blood, coming to terms with everything that had just happened to me… I felt worse, here, than I had when I woke up in the locker. There, I'd had a mission. A clear enemy, a clear end goal. Now I had time to myself to think, and I felt dangerously close to unraveling.

Where to even start, I thought, staring down at my shaking hands. They didn't look like my hands: there was a point when I wore gloves more often than not, and even out of costume my hands were tougher. These hands were pale, almost pudgy compared to how lean my fingers used to be, and the scars and rough texture all were gone, not to form for years to come. I was sweating, and it felt sticky and unpleasant, not refreshing like it would become once I grew more athletic. In short, this younger body of mine felt totally foreign.

I remembered from my Parahuman Studies with the Wards about how the mental vs. physical time travel debate was resolved years ago, as capes with time travelling abilities became more prominent in the public eye. Time travelling worked by manifesting something, usually the time traveller, backwards through time in a physical space and then presumably collapsing the 'original' universe where the time traveler disappeared, leaving only the new, 'offshoot' universe created by the split in the timeline. Of course, we say 'presumably' because it's possible that those doomed universes still exist somewhere, where team-mates in dire straits looked to their time-travelling ally to change the past, only for the traveller to pop out of existence completely. It would make this universe, where such a phenomena had never occurred in recorded history, astronomically unlikely.

And despite all that, I sat here, flying in the face of all the neat theories stuffy professors had dreamed up in their offices. Officially, 'mental time travel' was impossible, and anyone who thought they could do it was a strange and powerful sort of precognitive. In reality, I saw at least three flaws with me being a precognitive: one, I already had a power, albeit a crappy one: bug control. Two: my powers hadn't simply reverted to how they were when I had first triggered, which either meant that having an extended range was simply something I had learned how to do, or that my power had hitched a ride with my memories back in time; I wasn't sure which option disturbed me more. Finally, and most importantly, precogs couldn't see Scion. I'd watched him through a thousand eyes, I'd killed him, damnit. Any power that let someone learn this much about the entities couldn't be a normal parahuman ability: this was precisely the sort of thing the built-in limitations on powers were supposed to prevent.

So, had I really travelled backwards in time? I was leaning towards no. There was no real reason for it, outside of setting up some kind of awful fanfiction, especially since we'd won against Scion. If the fight had gone south, I could maybe imagine some tinkers making some time-travel bullets for Contessa to insert into my brain, as a last measure. But that was a completely stupid hypothesis, and there would be no reason at all to entrust the deranged, mute lunatic with the task of saving the human race. Come to think of it, if I was losing my mind as Khepri, why was I suddenly back to normal? If my 'mind' had really been transplanted into my younger body, why hadn't any of the damage, whether from the insanity or from the bullets? But despite these issues with the theory, there was no other explanation for what I was going through. I was here, this was not an illusion or a memory, unless there was a cape who was powerful enough to set up something this elaborate but who also didn't have any agenda for me. Hallucinating inside Echidna had a point: I was supposed to be cowed into submission. Here, I was just confused and upset, but there was no booming voice from the sky with instructions.

I frowned. One cape came to mind. I know I saw Sleeper on Zayin, reading that book. If anyone could deceive honest-to-goodness omniscience and an army of Thinkers, though, he could. But no, his power didn't quite work like this.

The bus turned a familiar corner, and I signalled to get off too late, getting off at the next stop instead. The bug population here was noticeably different than when I had left; in my brief stint as Skitter, Warlord of Brockton Bay, I'd made changes to the bug populations in the ecosystem, feeding the useless bugs to the fliers, spinners, and stingers of my swarm. In particular, there were drastically fewer black widows in the area, and I could have gathered them to me, started organizing my swarm, bulking out my forces and gathering silk. I could have, I itched to, but if I really had what I thought I had, a second chance? I would be playing this carefully. I would be taking any opportunity to avoid the spotlight and maneuver behind the scenes. The enormous advantage I had in foreknowledge of the coming events would be completely squandered if I made my existence known, and this was part of why I'd left the school so discreetly. It was extremely unlikely for anyone to notice my bugs, but on the other hand, I wasn't planning on anything that would require lines of silk, swarm clones or even a costume, and I didn't need to spy on enemies when I knew what they were going to do next. At least, until I changed something major enough to go off-script.

So I left my bugs where they were, for the most part, and sent a single fruit fly ahead to trace out the hallways of my home, even knowing no one would be there. After spending so long with near total awareness of everything and everyone in my power's range and a brief period of total omniscience, I simply couldn't bear to walk into my own house without being completely sure. It scared me how much I needed that control. And now, I was very aware of where that particular neurosis could lead. It was disquieting.

Even years later, after all I'd been through, I knew where to find my key, and produced it in the very same motion I'd made every afternoon for the past several years, chronologically speaking. It was funny how those little habits could stick with you like that. Stepping into my house, I was almost overcome with emotion: the few times I'd been back here since Leviathan, the damage had accumulated, structurally and emotionally. Dad had been forced to pawn things to pay for supplies, pictures had been shredded in their frames by Shatterbird's attack, and even after the house had work done in the windfall following the portal opening in Brockton Bay, it could never go back to how it was. Standing here, in my fifteen year old body, in my house as it should be, I felt like I was fifteen again.

It made everything I'd done feel just a bit further away, like it was all a crazy dream, and I'd finally woken up.

Can't let my guard down, I thought. This was precisely the kind of reaction someone would want me to have, right before I discover my dad's mangled corpse in the next room. I couldn't think of any better way to break me, if that's what they were aiming for. But ascending the stairs, I heard them creak in all the same places; the shower still took a full minute to warm up, and stepping in, the water felt the same. My towel was right where I'd left it. My bed, too, was waiting like no time had passed, and it hadn't. By the time I got there, I had all but forgotten my fears, and my dirty clothes discarded on the bathroom floor.

I slept deeply.

There are some that will worry about pacing, here, because it is rather slow, but I feel that capturing her thought process right after her world is upended is all too often left out of these kinds of fics. The pace will pick up as she decides on her approach for this time around.

There is a trademark of good writing that I'm trying to work on: "show" not "tell". The 'mystery' of why Taylor covered up all the evidence is not something I should "tell" you as the author but rather "show" you through her character, but she has other things on her mind, and forcibly turning her train of thought to that topic could break suspension of disbelief; I tried to strike a balance, but in case that wasn't enough, I may return to that issue later, in other circumstances.

And with that, we're done. Keep on reviewing! I need to hear those thoughts! In particular, though, if you have a comment about the story in general, PM me and I'll try to have a discussion without getting defensive. :)