Source material: Worm, Gestation 1.2
Originally blogged: January 21, 2017

Alright, let’s do this!

Looks like I was right in my speculation that Gestation might be the name of the larger arc and the second chapter might be titled Gestation 1.2.

Still not quite sure what it means storywise. Actually, I’m not entirely sure if I know what the word gestation means at all. I have a vague idea, but I might be wrong, so I think I’ll look it up.

…pregnancy, basically. That’s roughly what I thought it meant, yeah. Last chapter, I speculated that Taylor might be feeling off because she was carrying parasitic worms inside her that will break out at the end of their gestation period. I don’t feel like that theory is very strong after the revelation that this story is at least partially about superheroes, though. We’ll see.

In a more metaphorical sense, it could refer to the gestation of the main plot – as in, an arc that builds up the story until it’s ready to break loose.

My thoughts were on Emma on the bus ride home. For an outside observer, I think it’s easy to trivialize the importance of a ‘best friend’, but when you’re a kid, there’s nobody more important.

True. How young are we talking here, though?

Emma had been my ‘BFF’ from grade one all the way through middle school.

Oh, that young.

That’s quite some time. They must’ve been very close. So what happened?

It hadn’t been enough for us to spend our time together at school, so we had alternated staying at each others houses every weekend. I remember my mother saying that we were so close we were practically sisters.

In second grade, I once walked to the other end of town with a friend to call home from her house to hear with my parents if it was okay that I went there. Given that the trip took two hours according to my dad (who does tend to exaggerate times, but still)… it wasn’t.

I got grounded, though that only lasted about 5 minutes in practice.

A friendship that deep is intimate. Not in the rude way, but just in terms of a no-holds-barred sharing of every vulnerability and weakness.

♦️

(#homestuck)

So when I got back from nature camp just a week before our first year at high school started, to find that she wasn’t talking to me? That she was calling Sophia her best friend?

Ahh, “corrupted” during absence.

Sophia here seems to be the source of Emma’s shittiness, but Emma has since taken the role of alpha bitch. Interesting.

Discovering that she was now using every one of those secrets and vulnerabilities I had shared with her to wound me in the most vicious ways she could think of? It was crushing. There’s just no better way to say it.

Question is, why is Emma doing this? What did she see in Sophia, and why did it drive her to turn on Taylor this dramatically?

Unwilling to dwell on it any longer, I turned my attention to my backpack, setting it on the seat beside me and sorting through the contents.

Contents:
– Books
– Art project
– A bunch of other things that shouldn’t have been drenched in juice and soda and then thrown against a wall in a fit of justified fury

Grape juice had stained it, and I had a suspicion I would have to get a new one.

Well I mean, purple is a nice color.

I had bought it just four months ago, after my old one had been taken from my locker, and it had been just twelve bucks, so it wasn’t a huge issue.

They stole the old one because of course they did. Did the old bag contain the flute?

The fact that my notebooks, textbooks and the two novels I’d shoved into my bag were wet with grape juice was more troubling. I suspected that whichever girl had been holding the grape juice had aimed for the open top of my bag as she poured it.

Does Triumvirate count as a textbook? That would support the hypothesis of it being required reading.

I noted the destruction of my art project – the box I’d put it in was collapsed on the one side. That bit was my fault.

At least the project might’ve helped spare the books. I wonder what it was, though. That she seems to be avoiding specification right now gives me hope that we’ll find out, ironically.

My heart sank as I found the notebook with the white and black speckled hardcover. The corner of the paper was soaked through with as much as a quarter of each page stained purple. The ink had diluted and the pages were already turning wavy.

Something special about this notebook, perhaps? Maybe it’s for her favorite subject or something? Or perhaps it’s a doodling notebook, like I had for a while a few years ago.

That notebook was – had been – my notes and journal for my hero career. The testing and training I’d done with my powers, pages of crossed out name ideas, even the measurements I was using for my costume in progress.

Oof, in that case I can see why she’d be upset about it.

After Emma, Madison and Sophia had stolen my last backpack and stuffed it in a wastebasket, I had realized how big a danger it was to have everything written down like that.

If the flute was in the backpack at the time like I suspect, did they take it out first and hang on to it, or did that end up in the wastebasket too?

I had copied everything over into a new notebook in a simple cipher and wrote it bottom to top. Now that notebook was spoiled, and I was looking at having to copy some two hundred pages of detailed writing into a new notebook if I wanted to preserve the information. If I could even remember what was on all of the ruined pages.

Ouch. Also, if the bitches took the time to rummage through the backpack, I can just imagine them reading through the original hero book and– oh shit if they did that they probably know her secret

If they knew about her powers, though, you’d think they might think twice about continuing the bullying. Carrie comes to mind.

I guess they might’ve thought she was just fantasizing about having bug powers.

The bus stopped a block away from my house, and I got off, trying to ignore the stares. Even with the gawking,

Apparently she lives in a fairly densely populated part of the city.

the knowledge that my notebook was ruined and my general nervousness about missing afternoon classes without permission,

This suggests she does not, in fact, leave school early without permission very often. I guess this particular attack is a special case.

I felt better as I got closer to home.

Good sign for her home life.

We’re probably about to meet Taylor’s family!

It felt worlds better to know I could drop my guard, stop watching my back and that I could take a break from wondering when the next incident would happen.

That must feel great after being as tense as Taylor has been all day.

I let myself into the house and headed straight for the shower, not even removing my backpack or taking off my shoes until I was in the bathroom.

No stopping to meet the folks just yet, I see.

It would be fun if Taylor had a sibling, but with the way past Taylor and Emma were described as like sisters, I kind of doubt she’ll have an actual one.

I stood under the stream with my clothes on the floor of the tub, hoping the water would help get the worst of the juice out.

Hot Shower Scene™

I pondered.

/r/showerthoughts

I don’t know who said it, but at one point I had come across this notion about taking a negative and turning it into a positive.

Just multiply it by another negative, because that’s how math works.

I don’t think you can really attribute that notion to anyone specific, to be honest. It’s a pretty common thought that’s been phrased in a lot of ways.

I tried to take the day’s events and turn them around in my head, to see if I couldn’t find a more positive twist on it.

Hey, free grape juice!

Okay, so the first thing that came to mind was “Yet another reason to kill the trio.” It wasn’t a serious thought – I was angry, but it wasn’t like I was going to actually kill them.

Woah there, don’t get Carried away.

Somehow, I suspected that I’d hurt myself before I hurt them. I was humiliated, frustrated, pissed, and I always had a weapon available – my power.

Learn gun safety, kids, you’ll need it when you’re playing Nerf with grandpa’s bazooka.

It was like having a loaded gun in your hand at all times. Except my power wasn’t that great, so maybe it was more like having a taser.

As I mentioned last chapter, her power is underrated. An army of insects could wreck their shit if used properly.

It was hard not to think about using it when things got really bad. Still, I didn’t think I had that killer instinct in me.

There seems to be a kind of inner debate going on in this paragraph:
“I should kill them”
“That wasn’t a serious thought, of course I wouldn’t do that – besides, I’d probably hurt myself first”
“But they humiliated me, and I have a weapon”
“It’s not that powerful”
“I keep thinking about doing it”
“I’m not up to doing it”

A part of Taylor clearly wants to do it, while another is keeping her from it.

No, I told myself, forcing myself back to the subject of positive thinking. Were there any upsides? Art project wrecked, clothes probably unrecoverable, needing a new backpack… notebook. Somehow my mind fixated on that last part.

Now how are you going to turn that positive? Hm…

Purple is a nice color?

I cranked the [introspection chamber] to off, then toweled dry, thinking.

I like her determination to find something positive about all this.

I wrapped the towel around me, and rather than head to my room to get dressed, I put my wet clothes into a laundry hamper, grabbed my backpack and headed downstairs, through the kitchen and into the basement.

Again moving through the house without encountering anyone else. Maybe they’re at work?

Also what is she going to the basement wearing only a towel for? To deposit that laundry? Why before getting dressed??

My house is old, and the basement was never renovated. The walls and floor are concrete and the ceiling was [sic] exposed boards and electrical cords.

As bad as that sounds, it also sounds oddly… cozy?

The furnace used to be coal fueled, and there was still an old coal chute, two feet by two feet, where the coal trucks used to come by to unload the winter’s supply of coal for heating the house.

That actually sounds kinda cool.

The chute was boarded up, but around the time I was copying my original ‘superpower notebook’ over in code, I had decided to play it safe in all respects and start getting creative with my privacy. It was then that I’d started using it.

Oh hell yes, secret hideyhole.

“creative with my privacy” is a good phrase and deserves repetition.

Also, I think my speculation about the bitches reading the journal might be moot, because I appear to have misunderstood earlier – it seems the journal wasn’t in the backpack when it was stolen; the theft just reminded her that it could be stolen and inspired her to copy it over to the cipher journal. This means the original would be available to create a new cipher journal from (though it’ll take a bit of work), and I have a feeling she keeps it in this hiding place.

I removed one screw and removed the square wooden panel with the peeling white paint that covered the low end of the coal chute. I retrieved a gym bag from inside and put the panel back in place without screwing it back in.

I wonder what else is in this gym bag other than the hero journal. Provided I was right about that being there.

I emptied the contents of the gym bag on the disused workbench that the house’s previous owner had left in our basement, then opened the windows that were at the same level as the driveway and front garden.

So like, the kind of small windows you find crammed between ground level and front porch level?

I closed my eyes and spent a minute exercising my power. I wasn’t just grabbing every creepy crawly in a two block radius, though. I was being selective, and I was gathering quite a few.

Yo spider dude, gurl antz, all my homies among the scorpions, except Bob…

I forget, were there any flying insects in the bunch she called on last chapter? I don’t think there was. I feel like maybe those are outside the spectrum of creatures she can control, given “creepy crawlies”.

It would take time for all of them to arrive. Bugs could move faster than you thought when they moved with purpose in a straight line, but even so, two blocks was a lot of ground for something so small to cover.

That’s a reasonable limitation for this power. They have to be able to get where you want them to go, and you gotta wait for them to go there.

I busied myself with opening the bag and sorting out the contents. My costume.

Ooh. I’m thinking it might be… bright and colorful, as a kind of breaking free from the way she dresses for school. Or conversely, she might stick to the darker, less eye-searing style.

So basically, it can be pretty much any color palette and I’ll still be right one way or another. 😛

The first of the spiders started coming in through the open windows and congregating on the workbench. My power didn’t give me a knowledge of the official names of the bugs I was working with, but anyone could recognize the spiders that were crawling into the room.

Hm… How exactly does she specify which bugs should follow her orders if she doesn’t know their names? I guess she has a kind of sense that this one type she can feel nearby is different from this other one, and doesn’t really need words.

Also, it’s interesting just how much range she has. For a power like this, two blocks is rather significant.

These were black widows. One of the more dangerous spiders you could find in the States. Their bite could be lethal, though it usually wasn’t, and they tended to bite with little provocation.