Shard of Magic [Worm crossover]

by blake0831

Chapter 4

The past few days had been a tad nerve wreaking for Taylor.

She kept half-expecting the Empire 88 or the Archer Bridge Merchants or the Asian Bad Boyz or any of the villainous gangs in Brockton Bay to show up and press-gang her. Thus, she hid out in her house for a while and occasionally peek out the windows for any suspicious signs. After two days, she had worked up the nerve to sneak out for a quick morning trip to the public library to see if the PHO forums had any word on a new cape. She had spent the entire trip there feeling jumpy. She'll be going to go back Winslow in a few days. If Emma and her minions picked up on her paranoia, they might leverage it to hurt her....

After an uneventful jaunt to the library and a meandering path between the bookshelves and the public access computers (She gotten some strange looks after her third zig zag. Taylor eventually had to bribe the other part of her brain with some research journals and speed reading through them before she could settle down at one of the terminals.), she brought up the PHO forum site, browsed, and....

Nothing.

No speculations. No new threads. Nothing. The closest she called find was a few posts about hearing gunshots and BBPD had arrested a couple of loner (unaffiliated with any gangs) gangsters with substantial rapsheets. A poster with maybe a friend on the force did mentioned that the gangsters complained about being attacked by a cape.... but their descriptions of the assailants (plural?) was all over the place that other posters started joking about Stranger ratings.

Still, nothing concrete about her. She's still safe.

Taylor let out a sigh of relief. Her secret is safe. She was busy thanking the Sun and Moon (what the-? When did she start swearing to celestial bodies?) for her luck as her hand absentmindedly brought up a search page and typed in the title of a well-known science journal....

No. Oh no. Oh nononono....

**************************

Taylor blearily walked out of the library into the afternoon sun, trying to rub away her eye strain and shake away her hand cramps.

Her Thinker power had figured out the concept of the internet. She blamed the rest of her brain for enlightening it of the internet. Like she was somewhat a passenger in her own body, she had speed read through as many research journals as the library connection could load them, unblinkingly scrolled through theories, diagrams and illustrations. And her power luxuriated in the sheer amount of information it was taking in. If it had a separate body or Taylor didn't keep a firm grip on her mouth, she (more her power) would have probably squeed out loud in joy.

If it wasn't for the library imposed time-limit for public use internet, she would have been stuck in there. As it is, she had barely restrained herself from lunging herself to the library counter to get more access time.

Do other Thinkers have this problem? How do they deal with the urges?

Taylor sighed as she reached the sidewalk. Now she has to-

A flash of white fabric drew her attention to the skies above the street. A blond statuesque girl in a white and gold cheerleader spandex outfit ('Really? Dahling...,' a part of Taylor drawled.) was flying over the street, carrying a white robe girl in her arms.

Glory Girl and Panacea of Brockton Bay's New Wave.

Taylor watched them as they flew overhead, a part of her wishing she could fly like that, another part of her...

-noobservablethrusteffectflightachievedvialevitationorgravitymanipulationmaybeuniformappearsunruffledsuggestashieldforwindshearprotection-

Someone bumped into Taylor from behind with an angry mutter of 'Don't stand there like a gawping idiot!', causing her to stumble slightly and snapping her out of her sudden trance-like state. She blinked in surprise, as the parahuman duo flew around the corner and out of sight.

What was that?

**************************

Taylor let out a deep breath as she awakens from her sleep.

The last two days since she had returned to Winslow were typical, with Taylor managing to dodge most of Emma and her cohorts attempts to harass her in the hallways, with them only managing to corner her somewhat in the classrooms (but even then, they didn't really dare to push too hard with the teachers being present.). A twinge still on her back reminded her that despite being able to somewhat sense the incoming danger, that doesn't mean Taylor was able to act to dodge or avoid it. Sophia, being somewhat angry for Taylor's repeated dodges from her, finally managed to corner her yesterday (how did Sophia do that? Did she climb up through a window or something?) and had rushed push her against a bank of lockers. Luckily, Taylor managed to slip away with a feint and a few catty remarks before Sophia could do any worse.

Taylor sighed. The High school situation led to another thing.

The PRT Wards program. Or to be more specific, the thought of becoming a hero.

Taylor wanted to be a hero. To use her powers to help others. The idea of just sitting by and let her home town rot and break under the weight of the gangs chaffed her. But she had no illusions of able to go at it alone. Especially not for a grab bag cape like her. Unless one is a Triumvirate-level cape, the odds of surviving for long as an independent hero cape is slim to none before they are killed or recruited into larger groups. She hesitantly dismissed joining New Wave, as they advocated Cape transparency. But as the death of Fleur by the hands of E88 proved, New Wave can't help to protect her Dad from any fallout of her heroing.

And that left the Wards. At first, she wanted to disregard them, not wanting to go through Winslow 2.0 with cape powers thrown in. But as she thought more and more about it, she realized that she... didn't really have much actual information of what the PRT Wards program is actually like. As she thought further, even her information about New Wave seems incomplete, consisting of merely rumours and hearsay. Perhaps she should do more research first regarding her options before committing. Better talk to her dad about this.

Her mind then wandered to her dreams. Her dreams for the last three nights.

Ever since her passing encounter with the younger New Wave duo, her dreams had been strange. Partitioned somehow, running concurrently. Like she's having three dreams at once. One part was the usual confused nonsense of normal sleeping dreams whose details was now fading away fast from her memories. The remaining two however....

In one, she was flying through the air over a foreign landscape, performing aerial feats that felt wonderful, exhilarating and euphoric. Death-defying slaloms through canyons, skimming at super sonic speeds over lakes and raging rivers, mid-air dueling with air-borne fantastic creatures like Rocs and Dragons. Those dreams made Taylor smile at the memories of joy in them.

In the other, it was thoughts and impressions of rummaging through an immerse library. Pulling out books, scrolls and references. Cross-referencing and making connections between different materials. Assembling, testing and prototyping.... something. The immense satisfaction of a project coming together. And completion.

The last part confused Taylor. It felt more.... detached from her. Like she's merely seeing and following along what someone else (why she got impressions of the colour lavender?) was doing, in her head.

Taylor shook her head and sat up before pausing. What's that in the back of her head? Next to the 'Hardlight Shield' power? She concentrated on it, getting complex diagrams, matrices and formulae. Of geometric shapes, components and connections. And a name.

Aerial Self Locomotion via Gravitic Manipulation and Levitation spell matrix, with integrated Wind Shear Resistant shield and Inertia Reduction bubble.

Taylor frowned, trying to parse the meaning of the name (she's not going to use 'spells', like she had thrown out using 'Defense optimized mana construct spell' for her 'Hardlight Shield' power.). Aerial self-locomotion...

Taylor's eyes widened as her breath caught itself in her throat.

Is this...

Is this a new power?

Is this a new Flying power?

Comments

[TheDriderPony]

Oh this is neat. So she's got simulations of the Six running the the background of her brain and doing all the legwork. Hopefully they're not too self-aware.

[Spellflame]

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