[Coda]

I should mention: This one's called "Twig." It's the third story by this author. The aforementioned Pact was the second.

The first was Worm. Where Pact is a supernatural psychological-horror story and Twig is a mad-science monster-movie-ish story, Worm is a superhero/action story. Short version: Over the past several years, people have started developing superpowers when undergoing traumatic experiences. Some try to live normal lives. Some turn to supervillainy. Some turn to fighting supervillains. And then a monster appeared in Iran, dramatically more powerful than any superhero or supervillain ever, capable of breaking what was thought to be an inviolable rule of superpowers, until it's driven away, and the world moves on, and everyone tries to live their lives.

The story begins with a high school girl who developed the ability to control insects and arachnids trying to become an independent superhero with aspirations of working with the big-name heroes.

One thing that this author (J. C. McRae, a.k.a. Wildbow) does with all of his stories is that his characters are SMART. They don't know everything, they don't always make the best decisions, they're subject to emotional outbursts like anyone under stress would be... but they think. They're creative. They don't always try to solve all of their problems with brute application of the obvious uses of their abilities (whether superpowers in Worm, magical practice in Pact, or engineered abilities in Twig), but instead they apply them in other ways or even do things without relying on them. It makes the characters more deep and more human (even when they're not human), and it makes their flaws more relatable instead of leaving you asking "why would you DO that?" -- when they make mistakes, you can understand their limited information, or their emotional drives, or their reasoning.