"Creeper. Skeevy little skank."

"Can't believe they let her back in school. Disgusting. She's a menace to society."

"Are you trying to get us all killed, creeper girl? Is that what you want?"

The girl cowered under the mocking taunts of the bullies, clutching a spiral notebook to her chest. She fiddled with her glasses nervously, then tried to push past the girls crowding around her, with little success.

"Ick, it touched me!"

"Ewwww! That's sick!"

"Say you're sorry, creeper girl!"

"Ahaha! Yeah, you'd better apologize for getting your creep on us-"

"You horrible girls! You leave Yukie alone this instant!"

The crowd of bullies startled and spun to face the interloper.

Taylor Hebert, the shining hero of justice.

"You three are a disgrace to Arcadia High School!" scolded Taylor. "I left Winslow to get away from that crap. You're supposed to be better than this."

The leader of the bullies snorted. Arianna du Pont, wealthy heiress to the du Pont haberdashery empire and A-grade asshole.

"You're defending the creepbag, Taylor? You of all people know how dangerous she is."

Taylor glared at her. "Yes. Yukie should never have tried to fulfill her art project with her racy two hundred page Lung x Kaiser romance manga. That was wrong. And attracting the ire of supervillains is always a bad idea.

"But!" Taylor continued with a flourish. "That was an honest mistake! Yukie immigrated to our country just a year ago. The border between tasteful and inappropriate is different in every culture. She served her suspension and learned her lesson. It's time to let it go."

Yukie beamed at Taylor.

Arianna folded her arms. "Yeah, right. The little freak chose to show all of us her disgusting drawings, it's on her if she doesn't like what we have to say about them."

"You're just jealous of her artistic ability."

"As if. You pretend you're a moral guardian since you're a cape. We all know the real reason you're defending her is you're a nightmare fetishist like her."

Taylor narrowed her eyes. "You're a pathetic bully, itching for a chance to hurt someone. But that only works on people who can't fight back."

Taylor's backpack rustled and bulged. Something inside made an angry high-pitched squeak.

The bullies took a step backward.

"You wouldn't dare." said Arianna. "You'll be expelled. My lawyers will have you locked up so fast your head will spin."

Taylor took a step forward. "I'm allowed to defend innocents against the villains who menace them. There's nothing in the law that says the villains have to be parahumans."

Her backpack squeaked again, louder and angrier this time.

The bullies wavered, and Arianna's eyes went wide.

"This isn't over, Taylor." hissed Arianna. She spun on her heel and flounced away, her posse of followers co-flouncing with her.

Taylor let out a sigh of relief. She had been technically telling the truth. She was allowed to defend innocents against normal bullies. She just wasn't allowed to use her power to do so. At most she could have given the bullies another scolding, or hypothetically, shoved them and made a run for it. But they didn't need to know that.

"What a bunch of jerks." she muttered. "You okay, Yukie?"

Yukie beamed. "Thank you so much Hatcher! I mean, Taylor! You're a lifesaver!"

"I'm just doing my job, citizen." Taylor said with a smile. She'd always wanted to say that.

"So humble! You're my favorite hero!"

"I'm actually a rogue, but-"

"They were strict in my old country, everyone hated my art and they kicked me out of school. Here they suspend me for only a week and superheroes defend me! I love this country and you too, patriotic American hero Hatcher!"

"Well, I, um. Thanks."

"Can I have your autograph? Can I be your friend?"

"Er...sure. I mean, sure to the autograph, but being a friend is kind of a big...um, look, you seem like a nice person, but we've only ever talked one or two times, and-"

Yukie looked at her with doe eyes.

Taylor wavered. "Well, I...um...okay. We can be friends."

A faint blush spread across Yukie's cheeks. She handed Taylor a folded-up piece of paper. "Here! I made a drawing of you and your cute little pets. I hope you like it! Sign it and I'll frame it and put it up in my house for everyone to see!"

The bell rang, and Yukie startled. "Oh no, I have to get to class. See you later!"

Taylor watched her new friend hustle down the hallway. Amazing. She'd always wished for superpowers in the hope that they would solve all her problems...and they totally did. She'd gotten a new school, a new cape career, the power to stand up to bullies, and more friends than she'd ever had before.

She unfolded the illustration her new friend had given her. She winced. She didn't remember her costume showing that much skin, or her hatchlings being so...manly. And she was almost positive they didn't swoon like that when she held them in her arms...

...

1:10 pm

Taylor felt a rumbling in her stomach. Ugh. The bullies had gotten her riled up and her power was acting up.

She hurried through the halls to the nurse's office. Nurse Carey looked up as she came up. "Hey Taylor. The is the sixth time today."

"Just feeling a little stressed. I've got a Chem test coming up and I don't feel confident about my acids."

The nurse nodded sympathetically. "I always hated chemistry. All those elements and bonds and orbitals. Don't tell Miss Burwell I said that."

"Yeah. I want to be a chemistry expert so I can understand the acids my guys make. My tinker friend says they're stronger than conventional-"

Her stomach rumbled.

"Augh, sorry!"

Taylor hustled into the special room the school had set aside for her to indulge her new needs. The room was simple, empty, blank. Nowhere for a slippery hatchling to hide, no way for it to make an escape.

She sat on the floor, took off her PRT-approved biocontainment backpack, and unzipped the one-way entry port. The backpack jostled and squirmed.

"Cool it, guys. Calm down."

The backpack went still.

Taylor cupped her hands in front of her mouth, released the pressure that had been building inside her, and-

Blort!

A hatchling climbed out of her throat, its lemon-sized body bristling with needle-thin spines like a porcupine, its dozens of legs skittering as they clambered over her tongue and teeth. It made an adorable squeak of joy as it was born, its chemosensitive feelers twitching as it beheld the outside world for the first time. Then it fell into Taylor's cupped hands and looked up at her with its black, glistening compound eyes.

Aww.

Taylor gave the hatchling a sad smile. "Sorry, little guy. In you go."

The hatchling squirmed a little as she stuffed it into the one-way port of her containment backpack, but it didn't otherwise protest.

The psychologist told her it was a quirk of her power. No one else thought her hatchlings were adorable. Well, no one other than Greg Veder and Yukie just now. Everyone else tended to run away screaming in fear.

But at the same time, her power didn't make her think of them as pets. There was no emotional connection.

They were more like...expendable combatants, or livestock. She liked their company, she didn't want them to die, but the sad truth was that she made eight to twelve of them per day, and they had to eat a lot of flesh before they grew big enough to be useful. She couldn't possibly buy enough cattle carcasses to raise them all to adulthood.

She was glad her power didn't make her feel heartbreak when she had to euthanize her extra hatchlings. She never would have discovered their more lucrative, commercial uses.

Hell, she would probably have become some kind of freaky villainous mass murderer.

She shook her head and smiled at the absurd thought.

Then she dashed out the door to get to her chem class. She'd studied for two hours last night. Those tricksy orbitals would never know what hit them!

...

3:00 pm

Taylor got off the bus and made the short walk to her warehouse in the nicer part of the Docks. There was a sign on the front in plain lettering.

"Hebert Xenobiology Inc."

She waved to the pair of PRT uniforms on duty. They returned her wave with a joking pair of salutes. They were good guys, but she resented them a little all the same. After her very public trigger event - thankfully Panacea had made it in time to cure the victims - she'd been forced to agree to PRT oversight for her business. The guard salaries came directly out of her profit margins.

It wasn't like they were necessary. The gangs left her alone. After that stupid assassin teleported into the high security containment room and got what was coming to him, no one dared to give it a second go.

There was a visitor waiting for her at the entrance. A short woman dressed in old-fashioned clothing like a Victorian doll.

Parian, her first and favorite business partner.

"Hatcher. Long time no see."

Taylor smiled. "The artist shows her face at last. The new costumes coming along okay?"

Parian raised her hand and tilted it, a so-so gesture. "The design is good, but the PRT is worried about protection for the neck. Here, let me show you."

Parian gestured, and a pile of clothing next to her sprang to life. It inflated into a man-sized shape. A prototype PRT officer uniform animated by the rogue's telekinesis.

"Their standard heavy combat uniforms have inserts here and here to protect against damage to the spine. We can't use the same stage-3 hatchling scales as the rest of the uniform, they're not strong enough. The stage-5 armor plating we're using for the helmets would work, but the scales are too big to fit in this spot. I've been racking my brain for an answer and I'm coming up blank."

The organic armor her hatchlings grew as they matured was exceptionally strong for its flexibility, an advance over the standard PRT kit. The liason assured them that they had a sweet contract waiting for them if they could work out a reproducible and aesthetically pleasing design.

Taylor studied the uniform. "Hmm. Can't we just use the anterior dorsal plate on the stage-4s? It's almost a perfect fit."

Parian took a stack of photocopies out of her pocket and flipped through them. Taylor's anatomical drawings of the hatchlings at different stages of development. "...oh. You're right. But the outer segments, here and here, they flare out like wings. They'll get in the way."

"We'll chop them off, crop it to fit."

"Won't that mess with their tensile strength?"

"That's what you'd think, but the way the plate grows it shouldn't be a problem. We just need to find the right angle to crop off the end bits with a clean cut."

"...Yeah. I see it." Parian put the photocopies away, then gave Taylor a curious look, a slight tilt to her mask that Taylor knew hid a smile underneath. "You're smart, Taylor. I never would have figured that out."

Taylor ducked her head. "I, I just have a lot of time to think about this stuff. I don't have a cool power like yours that lets you make anything you can imagine, so I have to work with what I have. Let's go in and take a look."

Taylor unlocked the warehouse and led them inside, fastidiously closing the door behind her. The warehouse had rows of reinforced steel cages to hold the hatchlings, stronger cages for the more advanced ones.

She ducked into a strategically placed booth and put on her costume. White clothes covered with hatchling armor, much like their prototype for the PRT but tailored for her body. A bit lighter on the armor, for the sake of flexibility.

She stopped by the large fine-meshed cage for the stage-1 hatchlings and dumped out the seven new births from today. They squealed as they tumbled in to join their siblings, and the motion spurred the rest into action. Soon fifty hatchlings were scurrying on the bottom of the cage.

The cage began to rotate on its axis. It was fashioned as a giant hamster wheel, and its hatchling-powered rotational motion charged up the warehouse's emergency backup power supply. Each hatchling was born with a week's worth of potential energy stored in its body, and she was damn well going to make use of it.

Hebert Xenobiology Inc. didn't let anything go to waste.

They came to the large cage with the stage-4s. Taylor gave the hatchlings a judging look, then gestured to Parian. "They're getting restless. Can you send a dummy up to give them a target?"

Parian stepped back. A pile of cloth on her back slithered to the floor and inflated into a six foot tall cartoon mouse. The mouse strode forward and danced a merry jig.

The reaction from the cage was immediate. A volley of projectiles, making crack sounds as they broke the sound barrier before they slammed against the bullet-resistant shield around the cage, then burst into dozens of glistening white globs of deadly acid.

The acid dripped down the shield and ran down a sloped floor to collect in a container below. Taylor kneeled and looked at the acid level in the container. Almost full.

Taylor put on a pair of heavy gloves and carefully capped the container, replacing it with an empty one. She labeled the container with the date and time and put it on the shelf for outgoing shipments.

Parian peered at the label. "Hatchling acid for Datawizz. Who or what is Datawizz?"

"She's a data storage tinker based in Houston."

"Huh. From her name I'd think she pees out circuit boards."

Taylor chuckled. "Nope. Well, close. She uses acid to etch nanoscale circuit components." Taylor raised a palm."Which doesn't make any physical sense, I know, but Tinkers are bullshit. I lost her when she started talking about space-warping technology. Anyway, she says my guys' stuff works faster and cleaner than lab-made chemicals, something about the organic impurities boosting the effects."

"Nice. The pay's good?"

"Nothing special, but worlds better than that pompus Chem professor at Brockton U."

Parian winced behind her mask. "Sorry for setting you up with him, Hatcher. He was a good teacher. I didn't think he'd be such a...jerk."

Taylor smiled a little. Parian always caught herself before swearing. She didn't know if it was a habit the rogue had picked up from working kids birthday parties, or if Parian thought that cussing would spoil her delicate sixteen year old ears. Either way, it was kind of cute.

Taylor stepped up to the cage. "Hey guys! Come here!"

The stage-4 hatchlings bounded forward and pressed themselves against the shield. They were four feet tall, almost to their adult size, and their claws scraped against the shield with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Not the monomolecular sharpness that would sell as the blade of a top-tier hunting knife, that would have to wait until they were stage-5, but formidable all the same.

Taylor looked back and forth between the hatchlings and Parian's mock-up uniform. "Yeah, look here. The anterior dorsal plate is where it's at. Perfect. I'll get you three by the end of the day. You want to do the formal strength testing or should I?"

"I'll take care of it."

"Great, thanks." Taylor put her hands on her hips and studied the hatchlings, picking out which ones she would use for the project. That one was getting sickly, near the end of its life, and that one kept trying to escape the cage and melt peoples' faces off...

Taylor became aware that Parian was standing very still. The cloth around her was fluttering as if it was caught in a faint wind.

Oh. Right.

"Still not comfortable with the harvesting, huh." said Taylor.

Parian shifted in place. "I don't mind it as such, but..."

"I told you, it's the circle of life. You're born, your mother feeds you the carcasses of the dead, you grow into a deadly beast and kill animals to feed your young, then you die and your own carcass is used by others in turn."

"We don't all survive by eating animal carcasses."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "You're vegetarian?"

"Vegan."

"Oh. That explains why you always order the portabello burger at Bob's. Then, um..." Taylor pointed to her rolls of cloth. "What about your fabric?"

"One hundred percent cruelty-free. Artificial leather substitutes, faux fur, organically grown hemp."

"The dye on your costume?"

"Not tested on animals."

"Well, um. Well...what about that cat doll golem thing you used to clear out the rats when I moved in here? It swallowed them alive!"

"Humane mobile rat trap for live captures. I dropped the rats off on the other side of town behind a restaurant so they can live out the rest of their ratly lives in peace." Parian wagged a finger. "Because harming living, feeling, sentient beings is wrong."

"Huh." Taylor blinked. "You never told me any of that. Then...forgive me for being blunt about this, but why the heck are you working with me?"

Parian tilted her head, considering.

"I...like money?"

Taylor scoffed. "Really."

"Yes. That's part of it. I also want to do good works. I'm not a fighter, but if I can make better uniforms for the PRT I'll feel like I've done real good for the world."

"Except you make them pay hand over fist for it. Little miss hardass negotiator."

"Like I said, I like money. And...I was the only rogue in the city, before. It was lonely. I was always afraid one of the gangs would come after me, try to recruit me, and I wouldn't be able to fight back- Oh!" Parian raised her hand to her lips. "I'm sorry. I don't mean I'm only working with you for protection."

"No, it's fine. I get it."

"You're my friend, Taylor. A very good friend. I wouldn't work with you otherwise. That's the most important part, really, I should have said that first. But the friendship only came later. And in business, well, two people are better than one. If someone bad puts the moves on you, I'll be by your side to back you up."

"I get it. You don't have to apologize." Taylor smiled a little. "For a second there you made it sound like I was a gangster. Bribing you with money to commit immoral acts, under the guise of helping your friends and family. Seducing you to the dark side."

Parian's mask ducked a fraction. "I'm older than you, Taylor. I doubt you could seduce me into anything."

"Right. I'll keep that in mind."

"By the way, are you free for dinner tonight? It seems like we haven't done anything together in ages. In our civilian identities, I mean."

"It's only been a week." said Taylor. "I'll have to take a rain check on today, I've got plans with my dad. Maybe tomorrow? Wait, shoot, I forgot. Chris invited me to his birthday party. Okay, Saturday then?"

Parian nodded. "It's a date."

...

8:00pm

The sun was setting when Taylor left the warehouse, the stage-4 armor she'd collected for Parian tucked away in her backpack. The delivery of cattle carcasses had come in late, but she'd gotten them set up soon enough. Eleven hatchlings were on the way to their next stage of evolution.

As Taylor passed the gate she noticed that the PRT uniforms were gone. A woman in a black bodysuit and cloak stood in the entrance, idly toying with a wrist-mounted crossbow.

The junior hero, Shadow Stalker. The guard on the afternoon shift.

Taylor didn't think her operation really rated a cape as a security guard, but Director Piggot provided her free of charge. Apparently Shadow Stalker had a severe discipline problem and had been taken off patrols indefinitely to be the nightly Hebert Xenobiology security guard. The Director had been very insistent that Taylor report any bad behavior or signs of a confrontational attitude on the junior hero's part.

Taylor felt sorry for the girl. The hero should be out catching criminals and putting them behind bars, not forced to stand guard at a crime-free warehouse night after night. Apparently the hero's gear included surveillance equipment that reported her activities to the PRT, so she couldn't even play games on her phone or listen to music without being ratted out to her superiors.

Taylor waved. "Hey Shadow Stalker. Nice night, huh?"

"Hatcher." replied the hero. Laconic as usual. Taylor had barely gotten five words out of her since she'd met her. At first she'd thought the cape was shy, but that didn't seem to fit her attitude.

Taylor decided to cheer her up.

"Um, I know you don't like your guard duty much, but, um, I wanted to tell you I really appreciate your help. You're supporting small businesses and revitalizing the Brockton Bay economy."

Shadow Stalker grunted.

"You're helping fight crime, too. I can't beat up criminals like you can, since I'm only allowed to use my power against A-class threats. But Parian and I came up with a great new PRT uniform design! It'll be a few weeks, but they'll have armor ten times stronger and half the weight. They'll be able to take a hit from Hookwolf without going down. That's a darn good return for a few weeks of hero work, am I right?"

Shadow Stalker grunted again. Annoyed this time.

"Oh, and look at this. I got another person to join my fan club! It's not official yet, I guess, but she drew me this neat picture."

Taylor unfolded Yukie's drawing and showed it off with a proud smile.

"At this rate I'll have as many fans in my club as you do by the time the year is out! So don't worry about your heroism being wasted guarding a warehouse. You're doing your part to beat criminals-"

Shadow Stalker growled like a stage-6 hatchling and made a flying leap onto the top of the warehouse.

Taylor watched her go. She shrugged. Oh well. You can't please everyone.

She walked to the bus stop, one hand in the pocket with her Hebert Xenobiology brand hunting knife. Dad insisted that she didn't walk outside late at night without protection.

That wouldn't be a problem for much longer. She'd use her profits to buy a van to drive around town, with plenty of room in the back for storage and hatchling transport. She was thinking of spray-painting her logo on the side and calling it the Hatchermobile. But was that too generic?

Taylor pondered the problem, then set it aside. She had more important things to worry about.

Like dinner. Dad had promised that they could try one of Mom's old pot pie recipes. He'd never been able to make it come out right himself, but now that his daughter was a skilled entrepreneur he said he was confident they could manage it together.

Typical, really. Ever since she got powers and Dad found out about the bullying, he had been nothing but supportive of her school life and career as a rogue. He'd visited her new school and talked to all her teachers in person, telling them to look out for kids treating her badly because of her power. And he'd used his expertise in negotiations to force the PRT to play ball and make the concessions that let her turn her business dream into a reality.

She felt silly for keeping her problems a secret for so long. She and her dad had been nearly estranged. Two individuals going through life on their own, whose only connection was that they happened to live in the same house. But now that was over. They were a family again.

Taylor got on the bus and rode home, bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun, plans for the perfect pot pie dancing in her mind.