9

Chapter 9: Interlude - Fyreside Stories 3

Chapter Text

Hermione listened, her mind a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives, as Skitter, no, Taylor, described in far more detail than she'd done earlier a world that was straight out of one of those silly American comic books her father thought she didn't know he had boxes full of in the loft. A world that was, in many respects, utterly horrifying, and in almost all other respects even worse. It sounded like someone with serious depression and a total hatred of any form of authority had deliberately set out to create something both immense in sheer scope and utterly ghastly in all the details.

It made what she knew of the Wizarding world seem almost prosaic by comparison in many ways. Magic could be wonderful, or terrible, in equal quantities but it sounded like it had nothing on Parahuman abilities. Taylor had been right in Fudge's office, while magic was in general far more versatile than any one Parahuman ability, assuming you learned enough of it, those described seemed much more awe-inspiring in their sheer power. Even something as, well, on the face of it rather underwhelming as the girl's own ability had started out as... 'Really? Insect control? Leaving aside the minor issue that much of what she could control weren't insects at all, so it was clearly much more wide-ranging than that…' obviously could be pushed, or taught, or forced, into something far greater. Having seen what she'd done with the fiendfyre was more than enough proof for her that Taylor's power was vastly undersold just by calling it bug control.

Even when that was all it was. Because the sheer amount of mental processing required to track, control, and sense through every single arthropod in a zone possibly a thousand yards in radius was unbelievable. Hugely outstripping anything a human mind should be capable of in any way as far as she could see. No magic she was aware of could pull off even a fraction of that.

And now? Taylor was somewhat cagey about what her range actually was at this point, but Hermione had a fairly good impression that it was much, much greater. And, of course, from what she'd said her ability had apparently not only seized upon fiendfyre as being the best toy ever, which was beyond weird as well as terrifying in its ramifications, but seemed to have found all manner of magical creatures to its liking in a rather dramatic fashion.

She wasn't sure if that was more worrying than the fiendfyre or not…

Some of the other superpowers their guest had mentioned were even scarier, although Hermione had a shrewd idea that when she got back to her own world, Taylor's current abilities were going to cause everyone else there to take a step back and rethink, well, everything. But she could certainly see why Taylor had reacted so strongly to the concept of obliviation, and the imperius. Both were much too close to some horrifying powers shown by particularly evil people on her world, and Hermione had to admit she herself had thought similar things about those spells in the past. Along with love potions, which she hated the very idea of. Something taking over your very emotions and thoughts, making you no longer yourself, was not comfortable to contemplate.

Apparently it was common enough in Taylor's world, and almost exclusively the preserve of some spectacularly horrible people, that they had a deeply ingrained fear and loathing of such things. Which was entirely understandable going by what the girl had said.

The parallels between Taylor's world and the magical one were odd, even past all that, she thought. They had an apparently inescapable prison for the worst offenders called for some reason the Birdcage, which seemed to be essentially much the same idea as Azkaban. Although Azkaban, regardless of what the Ministry claimed, was definitely not escape-proof, as both Sirius and Barty Crouch Junior had proven at different times via different methods. Taylor said that to the best of her knowledge no one had ever escaped from the Birdcage. It also wasn't deliberately set up to torture the inmates like Azkaban was with the Dementors wandering around slowly destroying people's minds. That said, Hermione suspected that the Birdcage was nearly as bad, possibly worse, as a simple side effect of putting highly dangerous and generally hostile Parahumans into a situation from which they couldn't escape. It would undoubtedly lead to some very unpleasant scenarios…

But at least it wasn't designed to that end as far as she could tell.

They had kill orders, the wizarding world had the Dementor's Kiss, which was arguably worse. And the Veil, whatever that really was at the end of the day. They had precogs and other Thinkers, the wizarding world had legilimency, divination, despite her own feelings about it, and similar techniques. The main difference there appeared to be that the Parahuman precogs actually produced verifiable results, although from what Taylor said these were often rather vague at best. Hermione suspected this was simply down to being that the more accurate you tried to make a prediction the shorter distance into the future you could do it for, and vice versa. That seemed to be an almost inevitable end result of the uncertainty principle, something the magical world didn't really know about as such, if nothing else.

Human Masters mapped perfectly onto the imperius spell, in some ways to obliviation, and quite a few unpleasant potions and charms. What was a piercing spell or a bombarda if not a Blaster ability? And so on. For every category Taylor's world's PRT had, there seemed to be one or more aspects of magic that mimicked it nicely, although often much less effectively or precisely. And it had become clear as the other girl talked that a worryingly large number of those Parahuman powers were used for ill, on a scale that the wizarding world could only dream of.

From what she was learning, there were a lot of Parahumans in Taylor's world. Some significant percentage of the population had either Triggered or could Trigger, leading to potentially tens of millions of Parahuman abilities across the globe.

In this world, Hermione wasn't completely certain exactly what the population of magicals in the UK truly was, but if it was more than twenty thousand or so she'd be very surprised. In all likelihood it was a lower figure than that. Extrapolating across the planet, it might add up to a quarter of a million or so and that was being highly generous. She was aware that several countries didn't even seem to have magical communities, or if they did it never seemed to get talked about. She'd read an indirect reference to Russian magicals having almost entirely died out sometime around the turn of the century for reasons she hadn't been able to determine, China's magical population was oddly low although it did exist, North America had perhaps four times the number the UK did which was far too low proportionally… Japan had a fair number for its population but even there it was at best perhaps one in four to five thousand or so that were magical.

Suffice it to say that people with magical abilities were not common. Whereas Parahumans on the other world seemed to be lurking around every corner based on what Taylor was saying, although she admitted the vast number she knew about were fairly minor ones. Her home town appeared to be somewhat top-heavy in that respect, having an above-average percentage of heavy hitters. Unfortunately most of them being villains…

Including, as Taylor had admitted, herself. Although once she'd explained the true circumstances of her… origin story, to put it comic book terms… neither Hermione or her friends or parents could really say that how it had ended up was really that unlikely or unreasonable. The authorities in Taylor's world seemed to be remarkably ineffectual in some fairly major ways, especially in her home town, and the whole scenario as described by the girl led almost inevitably towards pushing her towards the less-law-abiding side of things. Considering that the so called good guys included the very person who had ultimately caused Taylor's Trigger event, something she'd discovered a few weeks after that point almost accidentally, it wasn't surprising that she'd be deeply suspicious of the entire organization.

Hermione was certain she, under similar circumstances, might well have felt much the same based on all the evidence, and she'd seen in Harry and Luna's faces their agreement. Harry had a dim view of authority himself, for the very obvious reasons of having been repeatedly let down by authority, and Hermione had found herself over the years of being his close friend coming to the conclusion that those in power often didn't deserve the power they had, nor the position they were in. Fudge was the most obvious example of exactly that, but she had been forced to admit in the end that Dumbledore was much the same. He was certainly far brighter than Minister Fudge, which to be honest wasn't exactly difficult, and in many ways she still felt he meant well, but all the things she'd seen and learned showed he was someone you'd probably be better off not trusting implicitly. At least partly because he had plans inside his plans to the point Hermione wasn't sure he knew exactly what he was trying to do, and he was most definitely not keen on letting anyone else in on his secrets.

The expression he'd got when Harry had pulled out that prophecy orb had in one brief moment made it very clear to Hermione that Dumbledore really didn't have her closest friend's best interests at the top of his list. It was probably on there somewhere, but it wasn't a priority, compared to whatever it was he had planned.

And he'd certainly had something planned. It was blatantly obvious that he'd known about that bloody prophecy from day one, and never told anyone about it. It was also just as blatantly obvious that Riddle had known it existed at a minimum, which meant someone had told him, and she really couldn't see Dumbledore as having done that. Which meant there were at least three sides to whatever conspiracy it was that had been running in the background Harry's entire life, and was probably responsible for all the weird things that kept happening to him.

She wondered who the third party was, and how they'd found out. It was something that bore investigation at some point…

But the upshot of all of that was that for one, Dumbledore was going to have a very hard time explaining himself to Madam Bones, she suspected, and two, Hermione was well over believing anything anyone in authority told her. Trust, but verify, wasn't that the saying? She wasn't entirely certain the first part was valid these days, but the second part was just common sense. As Professor Moody, or his substitute, and now she thought about it how on earth had Dumbledore not noticed one of his close friends was an imposter all that time…? But anyway, the fake Moody had quite accurately acted the part, and Moody's Constant Vigilance bit was good advice.

Everything that had happened recently proved that beyond a doubt. And, really, everything that she'd experienced during her time at Hogwarts.

It was a silly place, and dangerous with it.

Sighing internally, she pushed those thoughts to the back burner for now to join the many other things she had to consider as a result of the last few hours and returned her full attention to Taylor. She noticed that Luna was sitting very close to the girl, listening to every word with great interest and a fascinated although sympathetic smile. The petite blonde had been intrigued by Taylor from the very start, Hermione had quickly realized, as was she for that matter, but she suspected their reasons didn't totally overlap in every respect. Harry was leaning against the end of the sofa, looking very tired, but still paying attention even though he yawned every now and then, and her parents were looking by turns flabbergasted and infuriated.

"I guess in the end I joined the Undersiders because I was looking for something I couldn't find anywhere else," Taylor resumed, after a long pause during which she had been staring at her clasped hands where they were resting on one knee. "I wanted to be a hero, sure, but… After I took down Lung, and that bastard Dauntless got the credit for it…" She shook her head. "Everyone thought he was a stand-up guy, that's how they sold him, but in the end he was after glory as much as anything. I was an unknown, he was the big hero, everyone assumed he did the deed. And he certainly didn't bother to correct anyone. And I'm just the kid with the bugs. Probably a villain, just look at her, right?" She shrugged a little with one shoulder.

"I tried to set the record straight. I even met Armsmaster off the record to explain what happened. The guy is kind of a jerk in some ways, but most people are at one point or another. He listened, he understood, and he told me there was basically nothing that could be done. It's all about PR. Dauntless is the up and coming big hero, I'm just the small time kid with a power that makes people nervous." She snorted faintly. "I got the impression he didn't like Dauntless very much. He gave me some advice, some good and some not, and we talked a couple of times after that. To be honest I respect him. He's a good hero, and a very talented Tinker. But he's not good with people. Neither am I, I suppose…"

Taylor sighed. "But after that, I wasn't too impressed with the heroes. There were a lot of other little things too. One of the wards, Clockblocker, is a fucking asshole. He thinks he's a practical joker but he's mostly a bully from everything I've seen and heard. Shadow Stalker, yeah, I told you about her. Gallant is… well, I guess he's not a bad guy, but everything I heard told me he's also not very effective. Aegis is a meat shield who stick his face in front of a bullet just because he can get away with it when he should be ducking, and one day that's going to fuck him up good and proper, Dad said. Kid Win… He had promise, but…" She shook her head sadly. "Thanks to Kaiser that's gone. Vista is probably the only one who's worth respecting in that whole group and they don't respect her."

"What about the adult heroes?" Hermione's mother asked. "Surely they are more, well, useful? One would hope so at least."

The girl shook her head. "Assault is kind of OK, but he's also depressed as hell after his wife Battery was killed by the Butcher a couple of years back when that lunatic and his crew wandered through for some reason. No one seems to know what they were after, they just turned up, killed about two hundred people including a couple of dozen cops, a load of PRT guys, and Battery, then disappeared again. Half the commercial district got wrecked during the whole thing and they're still fixing it even now. At least in return Armsmaster and the others managed to kill several of the Butcher's capes and a dozen of the Teeth members… And someone also got Victor from the Empire as collateral, so that was one good outcome if nothing else. It was a real mess, Dad told me, because he saw the damage right after it was over. Assault still does his job but he's never been the same since from what I heard."

She paused for a moment, thinking, then carried on, "Miss Militia is competent, and effective, I suppose, but she's also way too fond of following the rules even if those rules don't make sense. If she gets into a situation where there's some sort of problem she doesn't understand things can get difficult, because she'll keep trying to apply her authority even when that makes things worse. It's led to some really strange and embarrassing results on the news, believe me. And she absolutely hates Über and Leet, because those guys seem to love deliberately annoying her since they know exactly what buttons to push. It's a dangerous game, sure, but it's stupidly funny sometimes."

Hermione couldn't help a small laugh at the mental image this brought to mind, despite telling herself it was wrong.

"Triumph is too new in the Protectorate to really have made a name for himself, and he didn't really stand out in the Wards either. I guess he was competent enough, but no one really has much else to say about him." She took a deep breath, then added with a scowl, "And then there's Velocity. I told you about him already."

Everyone nodded. Taylor, it was safe to say, was not a fan of the man whose actions had apparently led to her mother's death in a car accident due to him not watching his surroundings while chasing a villain. Hermione was mildly surprised that the girl hadn't already done something horrible to him. She certainly wasn't keen on discussing the hero.

"Finally, Dauntless is, despite being a glory stealing prick, a decent enough guy from what people say, but he's also too new too really have a lot of experience where it counts. That's what Armsmaster said, and although he's probably being harsh, he's not wrong. Armsmaster himself has years more experience and really does know his stuff but he's a public relations nightmare because he'll just say what he's thinking and too bad if whoever he's talking to doesn't like it. He's not deliberately rude or anything, he just doesn't seem to get how to talk to most people. He just says what's on his mind and expects everyone else to do the same, then gets kind of puzzled when people get upset with him. If you know that, he's easy to deal with, you just have to be direct right back."

"I've known a couple of people like that before," Hermione's father commented. "They tend to be… hard to work with. And not make friends easily."

"Yeah. I can understand exactly why," Taylor replied, nodding. "But to be honest after everything that I went through at school, all the snide little remarks, the lies, the sneaking around and pretending not to be talking to me when they were having their 'conversations' all around me…" She scowled for a moment, while Luna looked sad, and Hermione noticed Harry's fist clench then relax. "It was a relief to talk to someone who didn't do any of that. He just talks to you and expects you to listen and respond likewise. It was refreshing in a weird sort of way."

"I think I understand," Hermione's mother said with a sad smile. "It must have been awful for you."

"It wasn't fun, no," Taylor grumbled, looking somewhat annoyed even though she was still doing that emotion-suppressing thing of hers. "But yeah, even though he's technically on the other side right now, Armsmaster is one of the only people working for the 'good guys' I have any real respect for these days." She made sarcastic little finger quotes, causing Luna to snicker. "And oddly enough he seems to feel the same thing. Like I said, we've talked a few times and neither one of us was going to start anything. To be honest I like the guy. I'm almost certain he knows my civilian ID and he's certainly aware of Shadow Stalker being the bitch that she is. He's said things that make me think he's tried to get rid of her, but his superiors won't agree. And the PRT Director is so hard up for warm bodies that she's basically fine with the whole status quo even though that girl is a vicious shit who's worse than a lot of the criminals she goes after…"

The brunette shook her head in disgust. "That alone made sure I'd never even consider joining the Wards. If we were in a room together one of us would die." She quirked a tiny dark smile. "It wouldn't be me."

Hermione couldn't help agreeing internally. By the looks on everyone else's faces, they all felt the same. Even before Taylor had arrived in their world, she'd undoubtedly have dealt with this Sophia girl in a very permanent way if push came to shove. And for the life of her Hermione couldn't really say that was wrong, based on what she'd heard…

"So, yeah, the whole city is a mess. Too many bloodthirsty gang members wandering around for anyone to be happy about, literal Nazis going out on murder sprees, a crazy Japanese dragon-man who has a teleporting serial suicide bomber as a sidekick, more drugged up lunatics than you'd believe adding to the chaos… The Undersiders are small time compared to that and we do our best to only go after targets that deserve it. Mostly." She looked slightly embarrassed when Harry started chuckling to himself. "Stop that."

"Sorry, I can't," he replied with an exhausted grin, making her sigh faintly.

Deliberately ignoring the boy, which made Hermione smile to herself as it was obvious Taylor wasn't actually annoyed, the girl went on with the story. "Of course, Brockton Bay being what it is, things can always get worse. So they did."

"That Bakuda woman," Hermione put in.

Taylor nodded. "That insane bomb making bitch. Yeah." The girl rubbed her eyes for a second, then slumped a little. "The first person I had to kill. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I'll never forgive her for forcing me to do it." She stared at her hands for some time as everyone waited silently, then sighed slightly and raised her eyes to meet theirs. "She killed so many people, just because she was in a mood. Completely, utterly crazy. And I blamed myself for it for a long time, because it all started because Lung wasn't there to control the lunatic. Mind you, as Lisa pointed out, he was the only reason she was in the city in the first place, so there's that. And without Oni Lee helping her, which was also Lung's fault, it wouldn't have been as bad. But…"

She shook her head. "I couldn't help thinking that if I hadn't taken Lung down it wouldn't have happened. Weirdly it was Armsmaster who pointed out it would have happened sooner or later anyway and it wasn't my fault. Dad told me the same thing, but for some reason hearing it from someone like Armsmaster really drove it home and made me believe it. Don't know why, really." She shrugged. "Some people blamed Dauntless which was almost funny under the circumstances, but it wasn't his fault either. It was all her. All those people, all the damage… There's still a big glowing hole right in the middle of the commercial district where something she made took out an entire building right down to the foundations. Even the PRT don't know what it was, but it's a good thing the whole area had been evacuated. If the building had the usual number of people working in it there would have been another thousand or so dead at least."

Hermione felt appalled, and she could see the others did too. Her mother had her hand over her mouth and her father was frowning. "Lisa couldn't believe the result, none of us could. She was nearly caught in it, whatever it was, and came home looking like she was about to faint. Luckily she got enough warning from her power to escape and she managed to warn the PRT so they got most of their people clear too, which I guess was a good thing. Made them slightly less upset with us anyway. But after that, and the bombing campaign, the Director signed a kill order on Bakuda and Oni Lee. Lucky us, we found her first…"

Taylor looked like she was remembering something she'd have preferred not to for a few seconds, then continued in a slow quiet voice, "She'd tried to hire both Faultline's crew and Über and Leet to help her, we found out later, but both of them told her to go to hell. Leet nearly got her himself, and came close to dying when she fired back. Über barely managed to pull him out in time. Panacea healed him even though her mother said he was a villain and didn't deserve it, because he'd done the right thing. They had a big fight right in the hospital and it made the local news, which didn't really help Brandish's image. But the crazy bitch managed to escape too, even though Leet's weird raygun took off one of her arms. Everyone was searching for her, even the villains, under truce because it was obvious that she was going to end up killing everyone unless someone got her first."

"And you found her before anyone else," Harry said quietly.

"Yeah," the girl replied with a look at him. "Lucky us. If I didn't have my powers, she'd have killed us all. But I spotted her just in time to warn the other guys, although not soon enough to stop her hitting us with that fucking pain grenade. Me, mostly, I shoved Lisa out of the way but didn't quite manage to duck far enough." She looked momentarily angry even through her calm demeanor, her expression twisting. "That really hurt. Way worse than that crucio spell. I guess it reset my pain threshold, which was always pretty high anyway. And what she didn't know was that even if I couldn't see because I was in agony, I didn't need to see…"

Pausing again, obviously working through memories she wasn't fond of, Taylor resumed a few seconds later. "I dropped everything I had on her. She didn't have the vaguest idea just how many insects there are around the place. Hardly anyone else does. But I do. I know every single one of them, and I'd rounded up everything I could reach and brought them close by because I was worried exactly what happened might happen. Lisa always said I was paranoid, but…" She shrugged again with a small smile as Harry snorted and Luna grinned. "Someone was out to get us. I prefer not to be got. And it worked."

"Moody really would love you if he ever stops being terrified of you," Hermione commented with a laugh.

Luna giggled. "Taylor makes Moody look positively normal."

"She's better looking if nothing else," Harry commented sleepily, then slapped his hands over his mouth as everyone looked at him. "Um…" he added with a note of worry.

Taylor just shook her head and smiled a little. "I'll take that as a compliment, I guess."

He looked highly embarrassed and just nodded while Hermione massaged her brow. Her friend's mouth was clearly in need of sleep as much as the rest of him was, if not more so, if he was saying things like that. It was quite unlike him.

He was right, but still…

After a moment, Taylor restarted her story. "I wasn't planning on killing her to begin with, but I was in so much pain and so pissed off about what she'd done that… well, in the end I just decided that if I let her live, the chances she'd escape were way too high considering how often capes manage to get away from the PRT, and she might come after me or someone I cared about. Leaving aside how many people she'd already killed anyway. And it was even legal." She looked tired and depressed now. "So I just… finished the job. And that was the end of that. My first kill. Yay. Lisa, Brian, even Alec told me I did what had to be done. Rachel just wondered why I was even bothered about it, but she's… very Rachel. Dad agreed with the other guys, and so did Armsmaster. He even complimented me on taking a difficult decision without hesitation, and said sometimes you don't have a choice no matter what you want. I guess he's right. But I still hate that I didn't have a choice." Taylor massaged one hand with the other, staring reflectively at the dormant fireplace on the other side of the room. "And then when I found myself surrounded by crazy wizards trying to kill me… Killing is too easy," she added almost under her breath. "Especially with powers."

"Or magic," Hermione found herself saying, making Taylor look at her, along with her friends and parents. "What you did tonight… The Death Eaters, and Riddle… they were just like Bakuda. They liked killing people. It wasn't just ideology for them, they enjoyed the act itself. Everything I've learned about them says they'd have kept doing it until someone finally stopped them, and the rest of the wizarding world is apparently either too corrupt or too ineffective to do what needed to be done. You did that. Just like Bakuda, you did what no one else was in a position to do, and you saved a lot of lives in the process. Including ours, for which we're very grateful."

Luna put her arm around Taylor and leaned on her. "My hero," she said with a small grin and a giggle, making Harry and Hermione grin and Taylor look embarrassed but pleased.

"You people are very strange," she finally said.

"Considering the source I find that funny," Hermione replied primly, then smiled. Taylor actually laughed for a moment. She seemed to be slowly relaxing her rigid emotional control, and Hermione worried about what might happen when the true impact of what happened earlier finally struck their new friend. Hopefully she'd be all right.

They sat silently absorbing the information Taylor had conveyed for a little longer, as it was clear she'd more or less run out of things to say for the moment. Everyone was extremely tired, and Luna was almost asleep as it was. Hermione's parents looked sleepy but slightly more alert than the younger people, and eventually her father lightly clapped his hands together, causing everyone to jump slightly and look at him. "Right, then. A fascinating story, with ramifications I expect we'll be considering for ages. But right at this moment, you four all look like you're about to collapse, and I can't honestly say I wouldn't like to go back to bed as well. It's past three in the morning. Jen, the guest rooms are made up, aren't they?" He looked at her mother, who nodded.

"Both are, yes," she replied. "Harry, you can have a room to yourself, the one with the single bed, Hermione has her room, Luna and Taylor… Can you two handle being in a room together? The other guest room has two beds in." She watched as Taylor glanced at Luna, who was practically asleep on her shoulder, then nodded.

"That's fine, thank you," she replied.

"Excellent. Follow me and I'll show you where everything is."

She got up, the others doing the same, and everyone trooped upstairs. "That's your room, Harry, and this is for you two. Let me get some towels and a toothbrush each." Hermione's mother pointed at two doors between Hermione's bedroom at the back of the house, and their bedroom at the front. The house was fairly large, and had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs, as well as the en suite one attached to the master bedroom Hermione's parents slept in. It didn't take long to get everyone squared away. Luna, who was dead on her feet now, was practically lifted into bed by Hermione's father who smiled at the blonde then nodded to Taylor, the other girl sitting on her own bed. Hermione and Harry were watching from the door. As her father squeezed past them, he put his hand on Hermione's shoulder.

"Get some sleep, Hermione," he advised. "All of you are ready to fall over. We can do whatever needs to be done in the morning. There's no point fussing about things right now." His voice was low, to avoid disturbing Luna who had started lightly snoring.

"I suppose so," Hermione agreed. She smiled at Taylor, who returned the gesture, waved, and pulled the door shut. Harry, who was holding a towel and a toothbrush, gave her a look of baffled and slightly bewildered amusement, shook his head wordlessly, then shuffled into the next room along, the door closing behind him a moment later.

Feeling abruptly like she was going to fall asleep where she stood, Hermione yawned widely, hugged her father, then headed for her own room. Shortly she was lying in bed listening to distant traffic and the nearer faint hum of something flying past her partly open window, wondering what Dumbledore and the others at the Ministry were doing.

She fell asleep pondering the mysteries of a multiverse that had both Magic and Skitter in it…

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Taylor sat on the edge of the bed in a very nicely done room for a while, part of her attention on Luna who had rolled over and was making little squeaking sounds on each breath, part of it on everyone else in the house watching them sleep and making sure nothing was amiss, part of it covering the entire neighborhood while looking out for any threat, part of it missing her Dad and her friends, and most of it going over everything she'd experienced and learned today.

It was fair to say that today had not been even remotely as she'd expected things to go. On the other hand, it could have been worse. She was, after all, still alive, and had picked up some very cool new tricks and toys. Sure, she'd also had to eliminate a number of murderous terrorists and intimidate an entire government, but on the whole things had worked out pretty well so far. She'd even made some new friends.

Hermione, Harry, and Luna were interesting people and while she hoped she'd be able to get home soon, at least as long as she was stuck here she had someone to talk to. Hermione's parents seemed nice too and hadn't judged her, they'd just listened to her talk for two hours solid and asked sensible questions. On the whole she didn't feel the situation was as bad as it might have been.

Running a hand down her fyre coat, she smiled slightly to herself. The benefits of her unexpected trip certainly outweighed the downsides, if she was completely honest with herself.

Although that emotional backsurge was going to be a bastard…

Sighing faintly, she stood up and after a moment's thought, arranged to have her fyre slip under her costume and cover her in a skintight layer. The coat vanished in the process, leaving her looking more or less just as she had done when she'd arrived in this bizarre place. Then she took her costume off, folding it neatly, and at the same time making the fyre form a set of the most dangerous pajamas in existence.

It was incredibly comfortable, she noted with satisfaction as she slipped under the covers into a very soft and warm bed.

Lying back, she stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before closing her eyes.

When she'd first Triggered, she'd quickly worked out that she could push her emotional responses into her swarm with a little effort and it had become second nature to do that quite rapidly. She still felt the emotions, but the effect on her body was reduced almost to nothing even as the swarm got very agitated.

That was how it had worked until Bakuda.

That fucking pain bomb had totally overwhelmed her with agony past anything she could have imagined. Even now she wasn't sure if something had gone weird with her power or whether she'd just had some sort of breakthrough, but in her instinctive attempt to get away from the source of that all-encompassing pain, she'd retreated deeper into the swarm than she'd ever tried before. And something had… given way? Broken through? She didn't have the right words to describe it to anyone else, but her power had altered somehow, a connection past anything she'd tried before forging itself out of necessity and desperation. Her swarm sense had abruptly expanded in ways that defied easy explanation, but the end result was that she'd found she could literally push her actual emotions completely out of her mind into the swarm itself. Not just the response, the emotional sensation itself, to the point that when she really tried it was like she didn't have emotions. The upside was that it let her remain totally calm and hyper-focused when it really counted.

The downside was that Lisa said it made her creepier than a creepy thing that had taken a mail order 'how to be extra creepy' course at least twice, but on the whole that probably wasn't actually a bad thing to have available considering what they did for a living.

The other downside was that when she turned it off… at that point she tended to get back rather more emotions than she wanted. Everything that she'd shunted away came back in a rush, and it could be overwhelming for a few seconds to a minute or so. After Bakuda had been dealt with and all the fallout from that had happened, she'd ended up curled into a little ball on her bed for one of the longest hours she'd ever experienced.

This time she was pretty damn sure it was going to be worse. Much worse.

But she had no choice.

So, keeping what Hermione had said about how she'd done the right thing firmly in mind, she finally after what felt like days stopped being Skitter, queen of no emotion, and let herself just be Taylor.

Somehow she managed to keep the sobbing quiet enough no one heard.

Or so she thought, until a quiet and understanding voice said from next to her, Luna sounding like she was speaking from bitter experience, "Sometimes the best thing to do is cry, Taylor. Mummy told me that a long time ago, and she was right. I miss her very much."

Taylor felt a small pair of arms go around her and hold her while she fell asleep, and oddly enough, it helped.