The Other Way

Chapter One

Taylor stood on a rooftop with three super villains. That was par for the course for being a cape. Still, she had hoped for more open hostility and mental chess games when facing bad guys, if only for a refreshing change of pace from veiled hostility and emotional abuse of high school.

She had not been expecting gratitude, openness, and job offers.

Tattletale–Lisa–smiled at her. "If you want the full scoop, I'm afraid the details on what we do only come with team membership. What I can tell you is that we're a good group. Our track record is top notch, and we're in it for fun and profit. No grand agenda. No real responsibility."

The full scoop. That interested Taylor than the lunchbox full of cash. They had a boss, someone footing the bills and pulling the strings? She learned a few things coming here, just their faces and their names (though their names could have been faked), but unless Taylor could hold on to their faces long enough to find a sketch artist who wouldn't ask too many questions, that information didn't seem that helpful.

If she did go the double agent route, what happened then? She'd get more information on them, maybe enough to put them away along with their mysterious boss, but ...

If she got these Undersiders arrested, they weren't going to the Birdcage. Maybe Brian was a legal adult, barely, but that was it. They would get a few years in a juvenile detention center at most, and nothing if they slipped away. Either way, they'd come after her with a vengeance, and depending on how much they knew about her by the time she knew enough about them, they might come after her dad, too.

Really, it wasn't too different from her situation in school. Did she trust the authorities to protect her enough to help them? Or help them help her? At school, definitely not. Here? Well, if Tattletale had some sort of precognitive danger sense then getting them arrested would be like flipping a coin, and keeping them in a normal prisons was like flipping another coin.

"Do you mind if I take a few days to think about this?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Brian said easily. "It's a standing offer. Take all the time you need."

Taylor looked down at the lunchbox. Alexandria posed heroically on the front, but still seemed to judge her for being too cautious.

"And like I said from the start," he added, "the money's yours. No strings attached."

"I'll keep in touch," she lied.

WWW

With the rest of the day to herself, Taylor went shopping. Her fight with Lung had told her that a few EpiPens, a can of pepper spray, and a bag of chalk dust had limits. As a cape, she needed a few more tricks up her sleeve.

First off, she bought another backpack. It would get vandalized or stolen within the month at the rate she was going through them, but at twelve bucks a pop she could buy them in bulk if she wanted to. She dumped the rest of the money inside and threw away the lunchbox, just in case there was a tracking device inside.

She also filled the backpack with spiders. Carrying nearly two grand in cash on her person was a bad idea in general, and if she couldn't avoid getting mugged, then she could at least give her would-be mugger a bad day.

After that, she got a baton. It was light-weight, collapsible, and easy to carry. The cheap ones were ten bucks, but since she'd be betting her life on these she got one of the better ones. Two of the better ones. Sixty bucks.

She wanted to get a taser too, but those were expensive, sometimes up to a thousand dollars. She could afford it, sure, but she wouldn't have much left for whatever else she might need, and pulling out that much cash at once would raise eyebrows.

Stun guns though, were a fraction of the price. They didn't have any range, but if the enemy was fifteen feet away, Taylor had other options that were less likely to miss. There was still one problem.

"Got picture ID?" the cashier asked.

She hesitated. "What for?"

"Can't sell stun guns to minors. They're guns, see? Dangerous."

Taylor frowned. "Do I need to be over eighteen to be attacked by gangsters?" Or super villains?

"Nope."

"But I need to be over eighteen to buy a stun gun."

"Yup."

"How come?"

The cashier shrugged. "I guess politicians hate kids." That ... that was really the best explanation Taylor had ever heard of for public education. "You got a parent or something around here?"

"Yeah," she said slowly. "I'll be right back."

Taylor could have gone home and asked her dad to buy it for her, and he would have just like he got her the can of mace. But she had spent the last few months telling him that he worried too much, that the jogging routes she took were perfectly safe, and he didn't need to stay up at night worrying about her. Asking him to buy her weapons would be ... counterproductive.

So she walked a few blocks away from the mall, found a homeless man who didn't seem too creepy, and hired him to pretend to be her father. It was the best fifty dollars she had ever spent.

"I would like this thingy and, uh, this one?" he said

"This one," Taylor said.

"Right. And this one for my darling baby girl," Jerry said. Taylor had settled on the highest voltage she could buy as well as a less powerful one that could double as a flashlight. Backups were important, she thought.

The cashier looked at both of them. They didn't look much alike, and Jerry the homeless person dressed like, well, a homeless person, but Taylor dressed like one too, nearly. He shrugged and rang them up. "That will be $71.14."

"Nothing's too good for my little, uh, Angelina here, no sir," Jerry rambled while Taylor pulled a few twenties out of her pocket. "Once I came across a charming young woman who invited me to her van with the promise of carnal delights, and I woke up the next morning without a kidney. I guess she didn't want the other one much, but that there was when I decided to play it safe, and I have ever since. So when my little, uh, Angelina gets spooked by strange men with ill intent, I says to myself, 'Jerry, don't just get your little girl a box of condoms like your parents did for you, go and get her the full vasectomy.'"

"Uh, sir? I think your 'daughter' left?"

Jerry looked around. "Well, shoot."

"Also, here's your change."

"Oh. Well thank you very much. And God bless."

WWW

Later after her dad had gone to bed, Taylor snuck into the basement, put on her costume, and went out for another night on the town, looking for trouble. It was a bad idea, she knew. Her dad had noticed her sneaking out the night before and was going to be concerned if this turned out to be a habit, but Taylor was going to have to endure seven long hours of high school the next day, and she deserved at least another hour of being a cape to put up with it.

Or maybe she was already an addict, trying to get her fix. Either way, she was on her way out.

She considered heading back to the docks like she had the night before, but only Lung had been captured, and the rest of his men would have told the others about how they were swarmed by wasps before Lung exploded. She didn't want to risk running into the Undersiders while doing something heroic either. Besides, her dad had always warned her about varying her routes, and she figured that held true to cape stuff as well as it did to running.

That left boardwalk and the downtown area. Boardwalk didn't have much crime, unless you counted the Enforcers, who punished shoplifters and pickpockets with the same ruthless brutality that they went after beggars and loiterers. Okay, they were a scummy lot, but even if Taylor went after them, she couldn't get them arrested. They were violent thugs, but they made boardwalk look good for tourists, and the city was willing to leave them be.

Another option would be to track down some drug dealers. The ... what were they called? The Something Merchants were a group of small time drug dealers. The Bridge Merchants? Archer Merchants? Something like that. From what Taylor had read on PHO, there were probably a few capes at the top, but her encounter with Lung from the night before suggested that she might be better off going after non-powered people anyway. She could send her swarm after a few druggies and ... no, that was dumb. She could follow some druggies, tagging them with her bugs so she could stay out of sight until she found out where they were keeping their supply. How would the Merchants respond to watching a warehouse full of narcotics consumed by ravenous cockroaches? It might take a while, but it would be easy, safe, and if it all worked out she wouldn't even be seen.

The last option was the Empire Eighty-Eight, a gang of white supremacists who couldn't remember who won the second world war. They controlled most of the downtown area, and while the Merchants mostly hurt themselves and their customers, you couldn't even become a member without assaulting an "acceptable target." While other gangs made money by charging for protection, drug trafficking, or even sex trafficking, the E88 had built itself up as a business of hatred.

It was also the strongest gang in Brockton Bay, now that Lung was incarcerated. From what she'd read, they had as many capes as the rest of the villains combined. Heck, the Empire probably thought Taylor had done them a favor by tipping the balance of power toward them. With that in mind, she started jogging downtown. Her reputation as a superhero had already taken some hits. She wasn't about to let a group of Neo Nazis to mistake her for a friend.

WWW

Taylor stayed away from large crowds, scouting out with her bugs to avoid getting cornered by large groups of people. Small groups of people avoided her, noting her costume and crossing the street to get out of her way. Still, she stuck to the side roads and dark alleys, trusting in her bugs' senses to keep her out of any trouble she couldn't handle.

She sent her swarm out ahead of her, and had her bugs land on people as they passed. Soon she had dozens of them, perched on shoes and pant legs, giving her a partial picture of the streets in front of her. Moving bugs were on walkers, stationary bugs were on people standing still. Pairs meant couples (or someone with very wide legs), solitary bugs meant loners, and groups meant ... groups.

She heard a scream. She ran towards it even as she coated the area with bugs to get a better picture. It was close, just a block away on the other side of Lord Street in a small gap between buildings. She could see ... someone–no, two people, moving around in close contact. She couldn't tell with just her swarm which was the attacker and which was the defender.

She ran across Lord Street–and only a bug on a windshield warned her of a car coming her way. It honked as it passed, barely missing her. It would have been the perfect end to her superhero career if she were to die on her second night out because she forgot to look both ways.

Didn't matter. She was close enough to see the fight with her own eyes now instead of with her swarm. Only, it wasn't a fight anymore. She was close enough to see the beating.

The victim had fallen to the ground, and the attacker–a man on the bigger side of average with a shaved head–was kicking her repeatedly. That was ... pretty much the sort of violence Taylor had been looking for.

But while the assault wasn't going on in broad daylight, the man wasn't being discrete, either. Three others had stopped to watch like he was some street performer, and people walking down the sidewalk glanced down the alley like they were peering into a store window before moving on.

That got to her more than anything. She had come to terms with cruelty. She didn't like to admit it, but she had enjoyed attacking Lung where it would hurt the most more than a hero strictly should. But indifference? Looking the other way while someone was screaming for help? No. Traditionally, a hero should look out for innocent bystanders, but Taylor couldn't see any of them as innocent.

She attacked them all. Her swarm came down, stinging and biting anyone who was still standing. The perpetrator got the worst of it, but Taylor spared no one. The passing crowd was willing to ignore the victim who was being beaten to a pulp? Well, they wouldn't ignore her.

They all ran, leaving Taylor alone with the woman lying on the ground. She planted a collection of bugs on the attacker, but she could save him for later. He wasn't a priority.

Taylor knelt down beside the woman and pulled out her flashlight/stun gun to get a look at her. She had dark brown skin and straight black hair and looked to be in her early twenties. Her nose looked broken, she had bruises around her eyes, and her lips were swollen and bleeding. She was breathing, fortunately, but she didn't react to the light shining in her eyes.

Taylor thought back to the first aid class she had taken online after she had taken after she had decided to become a cape. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but without a first aid kit, she couldn't clean, bandage, or stitch anything. Should she treat her for shock? That was all she could think of.

"Can you hear me?" Taylor asked. "Can you tell me your name?"

There was no response. Ideally, Taylor should roll the woman onto her back and elevate her feet to help circulation, but if she had a neck or spine injury, moving her could paralyze her for life. Besides, she was bleeding from the mouth, so Taylor should keep her on her side where she was so she wouldn't choke.

Idiot! she thought. The first thing she should have done was call an ambulance. That was literally step one of any first aid treatment.

And she didn't have a phone.

She went on an entire shopping spree that afternoon, trying to spend two grand as fast as she could for better cape gear, and she had no way to call for help. Heck, she had even gone out of her way to scare off anyone who might have been able to call for her!

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Wait, this woman was assaulted, but she hadn't been mugged, had she? The attacker had left in a hurry and hadn't had time to grab anything. Taylor could still sense the bugs she had planted on him about a block away. He had stopped running after he decided that he wasn't being chased. If the woman had a phone on her ...

She patted down her pockets, feeling self-conscious that she was doing it without permission. She found a card (credit card, maybe), a key, and a folded up piece of paper, but no phone. There was the pocket on her other side, but Taylor couldn't reach it without rolling her over.

Maybe there was ... yes! A purse. It must have fallen away during the fight, and Taylor found it on the other side of the alley. She picked it up and rifled through the woman's notebooks, pens, a pack of gum, stray pieces of paper, an old candy bar, and ...

She felt something flying through the air, knocking her bugs out of the way, and she heard it a moment later, crashing into the sidewalk with enough force to make the concrete crack.

Glory Girl, blonde, statuesque, and in a costume that reminded Taylor of the Greek goddess Athena, stood up, looked down at the beaten woman, and fixed Taylor with a stare that made her blood freeze.

"Maybe," she said coldly, "you should start running."

That ... that would have been a monumentally stupid idea. Taylor didn't know exactly how fast Glory Girl could fly, but she doubted that she could escape in a car, and the closest thing Brockton Bay had to its own personal Alexandria would see it as an admission of guilt.

"I-I'm one of the good guys." Taylor felt a sense of deja vu from the night before when Armsmaster had shown up, but then she had been so exhausted from her fight with Lung to feel anything but tired. Now? She felt more scared of Glory Girl than she ever had of Lung. Against Lung, Taylor could at least fight back, but against Glory Girl? Fighting her would only make Taylor look like the villain that she kept saying she wasn't.

"You don't look like one."

Well, sorry for going out in a homemade costume! Sorry I didn't have my own costume designer dedicated to making me look good!

Taylor didn't say that, but she gritted her teeth. She'd had enough of people criticizing her appearance while at school. She'd had enough of situations were people assumed she was wrong just by looking at her. And she had had enough of being put in positions where she couldn't do anything but take the abuse.

She had put up with that for years as a gangly, awkward teenager. There was no way in hell that she was going to put up with it as a cape.

There were a dozen things she could have said to diffuse the situation. She ignored all of them.

"Tough."

WWW

A/n I discovered Worm a few weeks ago, and if you haven't read it ... then you should instead of wasting your time on cheap fanfics. But if you haven't read it, it's less like an emotional roller coaster and more like a 1.5 million word heart attack, and it was amazing. Usually when I read something I really like, I write a fanfic about it to deal with the fact that it ended before its time. With Worm, I was looking forward to writing a fanfic only a few arcs into it and even reading it a second time around because it was just that good.

Like I said in the summary, Taylor's going to be an official hero from the start instead of taking an extended detour through villainy, and this story is going to be significantly less grimdark. So basically I'm taking a grimdark story about a villain protagonist, and make it a noblebright story about a hero protagonist. Fanfiction is weird.

As for her cape name, I honestly haven't settled on one. I think of her mostly as Skitter, but that was her villain name and she admitted that she didn't really like it. Weaver was her hero name, so that's an option. I read that in one of the earlier drafts she had the name Myriad because she could control a myriad of bugs, so that's technically an option too.

Of course, in canon she didn't get a cape name until after the bank robbery, so there's no rush.