Let's read Worm and its sequel Ward by Wildbow (One chapter/every day)

I know that I'm late to the discussion, but you've clearly never seen Fate/Zero.

Sometimes, to save a hundred people, you have to kill one. Sometimes, to save a hundred people, you have to let ten die as a side-effect. Sometimes, to save two people you have to brutally murder one. There is much moral ambiguity in any action and no action can truly be called one-hundred percent evil unless done with purely evil intent in heart.

Take Mannequin. Hadn't he experienced so much grief, he would be a good person right now. In that same way, anyone who'd experience what he went through might have come out evil as well. Is it his fault he couldn't stand against a force of nature? His victims, by consequence, only died because of what the Simiurgh did. And the Simiurgh did it because... well, no spoilers. Everything about one's decisions is a long predetermined chain of reactions, often invisible to the naked eye of the person becoming the next link in the chain.

You're a logical person from what I can tell, but most of the time you let emotions and assumptions cloud your assessment. Never judge a book by its cover is a saying that has applications almost anywhere.

Anyway, at this point in the story I was very wary of Cauldron and very well thought they could be up to something evil. They let innocent people die on a daily basis, but what large-scale organization didn't? They created villains, but they also created heroes like Battery. Clearly, something at play. So, yes. I had them tagged as: "very possibly evil," but not to the point of being this extreme about it:


Anyway, enjoying your reactions so far.

Sometimes, to save hundreds of innocent people, you should not kill anyone and find other methods to save them. There are plenty of other methods that doesn't involve killing. If I'd be in a situation when I'll have to choose between killing one of two innocent people, I'll think at other ways to save both of them even if I'll hurt myself in the process. I'll rather prefer to hurt myself than kill one of them, because I have strong morals and every innocent life matters. If they'll die accidentally, at least I'll be happy that I did anything I could. But I'll try to save them. I'll try hard to save them.

Ok, again, its your opinion, everyone have their own opinions, as I keep saying all the time. If you want to feel bad for Mannequin and find excuses for his CRIMES then you're free to feel bad for him and find excuse for his CRIMES. From my point of view, he have no excuse for doing what he's doing now. His past (I know that I keep seeing Mannequin and Alan as separate persons but right know, while I'm giving you this reply, I'm going to see them as one person. I'm going to make this exception) Mannequin is EVIL and he have no excuse for what he's doing. Yes, he lost his wife and children. And? There are are thousands of other people who lost their wives, husband, children, and they don't get nuts and hate humanity and kill people left and right. This is not an excuse, one can get over their grief and continue with their life not trying to destroy other lives. I personally know a woman who lost both her children (one died because of an accident and one because of cancer). She didn't go nuts, she didn't tried to kill other women's children, she suffered and still suffers but she pray for her children to rest in peace in Heaven and she constantly wishes that nobody else will go through what happened to her ever again. Some people can fight with their suffering. Hell, even in Worm-verse, Hannah went through HELL and she became a heroine instead of a monster. Alan is now is monster, there's no excuse for what he's doing and I hold no mercy for him. I'd rather feel pity for Bonesaw, she's a child and who knows, maybe she's forced to do what she's doing or she's too emotionally immature to realize that she's doing something very bad.

Hell, Cauldron created more villains than heroes so far. They created Siberian and Satterbird and maybe Noelle. Siberian and Shatterbird possible killed thousands of people even more than the few heroes they created can save. How many people Battery saved compared with how many people Siberian/Shatterbird killed? Less people, I can tell you. Besides, they're using Battery to help villains escape. They're slowly turning her into a villain, even without her realizing this. Are you sure they really want to create heroes? Well, you know more, you finished reading this story but a thing is certain: Under no circumstances I'll believe that what Cauldron is doing is good. Even if they want to save the wold from Jack, for example, I'll still believe they're EVIL as long as their methods are entirely amoral and...let's say...evil. This is my opinion about them and I'll keep it until the very end. Or until I'll see myself that I'm wrong.

Thank you for your opinions and appreciation. :)
 
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As I'm sure you've guessed, Mannequin keeps showing up in the next few chapters.

I guessed that he'll appear in the next Chapter because they're going to go for a second round of fight with this fucker. Gosh, when the Mannequin will cease to exist in this story (I don't care if they'll kill him or freeze him in time or throw him in space or give him to Endbringers as apperizer) I'm gonna throw a party in my apartment where I'll invite my friends. A nice random party. If they're going to ask me with which occasion I'm throwing a nice random party, I'm gonna tell them that something beautiful happened in my life. The best explanation for any nice random party. :)
 
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It is not that they choose the most difficult way, it is that they can not choose the easiest one.
Also, you keep your hopes too high, to read worm I recommend you expect the worst.
And finally, I'm waiting for you to finish worm to see your new opinion of the whole image.

I'm expecting the worst but I'll still keep my hopes and optimism too high because I'm a very optimistic person who still hold onto hope no matter how dire is a situation. Maybe some of my opinions over some of characters and events and powers will change when I'll reach the end, but my personal beliefs will remain the same. Believe me. Btw, I'm going to give you an example (not Game of Thrones neither The Walking Dead because there's still hope in their dark worlds), but I'll choose Crossed. Crossed is a really fucked up comic book (you can find it for free http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Crossed-Badlands -but DON'T READ IT if you can't stomach
rapes, horrible mutilations, horrible murders, cannibalistic acts and so on
) about a virus who turn everyone infected by it into murderous psychos. Not something like zombies, they're still intelligent people, but they feel constantly the need to do the most evil things someone can do, even to their loved ones- they're even worse than any other Worm's villains so far). So, I read Crossed, which is the most hopeless and dire and cruel thing possible and YET I still believed that non-infected main characters could survive and find ways to stop the virus. Even in a world completely ravaged by infected psychos, I believed that there might be hope. Now you understand how optimistic I'm if I was optimistic even while I was reading Crossed? My father told me once- joking- that I'm fairly nuts because I still look at the bright side in any given situation. I replied something like...only "fairly"? :)
 
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I know that I'm late to the discussion, but you've clearly never seen Fate/Zero.

Sometimes, to save a hundred people, you have to kill one. Sometimes, to save a hundred people, you have to let ten die as a side-effect. Sometimes, to save two people you have to brutally murder one. There is much moral ambiguity in any action and no action can truly be called one-hundred percent evil unless done with purely evil intent in heart.
the moral of fate/zero was that this sort of cold blooded utilitarianism was completely unworkable and would slowly destroy you as you cause far more damage than you prevent by reducing human lives to simple math equations though. Like, that was literally the point. That Kiritsugu cannot save the world, cannot be the hero, because he's made a monster of himself by treating good and evil as math problems to be solved with violence.
 
Sometimes, to save hundreds of innocent people, you should not kill anyone and find other methods to save them.
Sometimes, there are no other methods. If you had the knowledge that one person will, in the future, become a Stalin or Hitler-esque dictator whose rule will lead to millions of deaths, wouldn't you kill them? Kill one, save millions. You can argue that it's possible to talk them out of this, but that isn't always the case. And you can't convince the court to imprison someone for a crime they hadn't committed yet.

Imagine there's a plane full of genetically-modified bugs. When released, they have the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. You know the plane will release the bugs upon landing in a heavily urbanized area and have no way of preventing the release. You're on a boat and have a rocket launcher that will allow you to destroy it and everything onboard. Once it sinks into the sea, the bugs will die. The problem is that there are several innocent crew-members.

Do you take the shot?

As for Cauldron, you can't know who or what Cauldron created or did at this point - you don't have a full list. What you're doing is like judging someone for killing another person without knowing any details - Was it in self-defense? In a 'heat-of-the-moment'? Was it an accident?

Never judge things without having the full picture. That's how you get errors in math. That's how you misunderstand situations. That's how you see people for something they aren't. I'm not saying Cauldron isn't evil. I'm not saying Cauldron isn't good. I'm saying you can't judge it properly at this stage of the story. You can have suspicions, yes. If you say: "They're probably evil," that's fair enough and at this stage of the story I'd agree with you. But if you state with absolute confidence that they are evil, even though you clearly lack data, you are committing an intellectual crime.

Then again, I'm a consequentialist. I believe that as long as the maximum number of people is happy and the minimum number of people is hurt, that can be defined as good and the way of getting there doesn't matter as long as the result of "most happiness, least pain" is achieved. You're a bit more like a deontologist, believing that there must be morality in achieving the outcome, otherwise, the outcome is meaningless and the person who achieved it is evil for doing so.

That's my two cents on the matter.

Looking forward to your next reaction.
 
Sometimes, there are no other methods. If you had the knowledge that one person will, in the future, become a Stalin or Hitler-esque dictator whose rule will lead to millions of deaths, wouldn't you kill them? Kill one, save millions. You can argue that it's possible to talk them out of this, but that isn't always the case. And you can't convince the court to imprison someone for a crime they hadn't committed yet.

Imagine there's a plane full of genetically-modified bugs. When released, they have the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. You know the plane will release the bugs upon landing in a heavily urbanized area and have no way of preventing the release. You're on a boat and have a rocket launcher that will allow you to destroy it and everything onboard. Once it sinks into the sea, the bugs will die. The problem is that there are several innocent crew-members.

Do you take the shot?

As for Cauldron, you can't know who or what Cauldron created or did at this point - you don't have a full list. What you're doing is like judging someone for killing another person without knowing any details - Was it in self-defense? In a 'heat-of-the-moment'? Was it an accident?

Never judge things without having the full picture. That's how you get errors in math. That's how you misunderstand situations. That's how you see people for something they aren't. I'm not saying Cauldron isn't evil. I'm not saying Cauldron isn't good. I'm saying you can't judge it properly at this stage of the story. You can have suspicions, yes. If you say: "They're probably evil," that's fair enough and at this stage of the story I'd agree with you. But if you state with absolute confidence that they are evil, even though you clearly lack data, you are committing an intellectual crime.

Then again, I'm a consequentialist. I believe that as long as the maximum number of people is happy and the minimum number of people is hurt, that can be defined as good and the way of getting there doesn't matter as long as the result of "most happiness, least pain" is achieved. You're a bit more like a deontologist, believing that there must be morality in achieving the outcome, otherwise, the outcome is meaningless and the person who achieved it is evil for doing so.

That's my two cents on the matter.

Looking forward to your next reaction.

I'm going to answer your questions. First: No, I won't kill the future dictator. What if the information about them becoming a dictator will turn to be fake? What if is nothing sure and I'll kill someone innocent based on a piece of fake information? You never know what is really true and what is fake. Ok, let's admit that is true. I'll try to guide their steps into becoming anything else except a leader. I'll stay in their shadow, I'll follow them their whole life if its necessary and I'll bring them on the right path. I'll sacrifice my own personal life only to turn the future leader into someone that would never want to become leader in the first place. In this way, I'll save both them and millions of other people. If I'll fail, I'll admit my failure. But I'll not kill them as long as they're still innocent only because their future is dark. This is the the same question like this one: if you can turn back in time will you kill baby Hitler? My answer will be NO. I won't kill baby Hitler. I'd rather kidnap him, give him to other family, in a different country (let's say Romania), and let them instructions about how to raise him in a way that will prevent him from becoming a dictator. For example, send him to School Art so he'll pursue his artistic skills instead of military ones. But I'll never kill past or future dictators before they become dictators. Its absolute immoral to me.

Now for the plane. Honestly? If I have the necessary time, I'll go to authorities and ask them to evacuate the area or to convince the pilots NOT to land the plane. If I don't have the necessary time, I'll do the only thing I have to do in this situation: give someone else the rocket launcher and ask them to destroy the plane. In this way, I'll be accomplice to murders, but not the murderer. Yes, I'll do something bad by giving someone else responsibility for this crime but at least I'll go to sleep without hating myself that I personally killed people, even with the price of saving others. I'll still feel bad because I made someone else to do this awful thing. But in Worm-verse its more easy to save everyone as long as you have powers. I can assure you that if I had Taylor's powers I would have saved the plane's passengers and the other people.

As for Cauldron, what if I'll still think that they're evil, even if I'll find everything about their reasons? Would you still think that I commit an intellectual crime because I judge them or you'll let me judge them according to my own beliefs especially since I'll have full information about them? For example, if Doctor Mother will truly want to save the world but I'll never agree with her methods (while fully knowing everything about her plans) and I'll hate her even more (I have a feeling that this will happen), will you be ok with my POV or you'll try to convince me to turn my back to my own beliefs and accept her possible "good" intentions (even if her methods will possible cause even more destruction that whatever she's trying to prevent?)?
-Anyway, a thing is certain to me: I still want to see Shatterbird and Siberian being killed and Battery to stop helping Cauldron.
Besides, Skitter should save the world, she's the main character, not some random shady organisation. ;)
As for deontologist, yes, I'm kind of a deontologist, but I'll still agree with stealing from someone and even beating someone in order to achieve an outcome. But NEVER EVER with torture/murder, as long as that respective person isn't a ruthless murderer themselves.
 
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As for Cauldron, what if I'll still think that they're evil, even if I'll find everything about their reasons? Would you still think that I commit an intellectual crime because I judge them or you'll let me judge them according to my own beliefs especially since I'll have full information about them? For example, if Doctor Mother will truly want to save the world but I'll never agree with her methods (while fully knowing everything about her plans) and I'll hate her even more (I have a feeling that this will happen), will you be ok with my POV or you'll try to convince me to turn my back to my own beliefs and accept her possible "good" intentions (even if her methods will possible cause even more destruction that whatever she's trying to prevent?)?
If you find out everything about them and believe they are evil, that's fair enough to me. You're forming an opinion and making a decision based on the complete image of data available to you, which is very logical.

Anyway, I enjoyed the conversation.
 
I suppose its a problem what with spoilers e'erywhere but I don't suppose you've anyone you'd hoped to see fanart of?
 
Snare 13.2
Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter 2 of Snare 13.2. Before I'll start, I have to tell you that I took some Moral Alignment Quizzes and I got every fucking time Chaotic Good alignment. Basically, I'm doing good as much as I can but following my own rules. I'm like my rules are better than society's rules, who often are unfair towards people. Well, the truth is that I have to respect rules, even if I dislike some of them. But if I have the power to play by my own rules, I won't hesitate not even a bit. :)I'm proud of my alignment anyway. I couldn't ask for something better and more fitting. Also, I was thinking at something. About Mannequin. I was asked by Birdsie if I'll kill someone who might become a genocidal leader in the future. I answered that I'll not kill them, but I'll try my best to prevent them from becoming that kind of a leader in the future. As long as it doesn't involve hurting or killing them, I'd do whatever its necessary. The same can be applied to Mannequin. Precisely to Alan. If I were a Worm-verse character with the ability to time travel and have a very good control over it (for example I can change the original timeline without creating alternative timelines) and I'll have the possibility to kill Alan before turning into Mannequin, I'll still be unable to do it. I'll be unable to kill Alan, because Alan is innocent. No matter how much I hate Mannequin and how dangerous he's, I still can't bring myself to kill innocent Alan (but I would kill Simurgh if I could, but that would be an impossible feat). But I'll still do something regarding Alan. I'll follow all his movements, I'll learn everything I can about his weaknesses, be mental or physical, and when he'll turn himself into Mannequin, I'll use these information to help other parahumans to defeat him. This is the best method to fight against Mannequin without having to kill Alan. This is my philosophy of life. You should not stop someone from becoming evil through violence, when they didn't do anything wrong yet, but you can try to make them change their mind or keep them away from everything who might turn them evil and if you'll fail, at least learn their weaknesses and use them against them when they'll become monsters. Ok, enough with talking about morals, what is good and what is wrong and let's see how Mannequin is planning to avenge his first round of getting his ass kicked by Skitter. Through another round of getting his ass kicked by everyone else, I suppose.

"Aisha's not here," Grue informed us.
He locked the door to his headquarters and climbed on top of Sirius. Bitch and I were astride Bentley and Lucy, respectively, and Bastard was on the end of a chain that Bitch held.
"Did you give her a job before you left for Coil's this morning?" I suggested.
He shook his head, "No. I make notes, and I make her take notes too. Keeping track of that girl is a nightmare."
"Tattletale's working on her idea," I said. It felt ineffectual as reassurances went. In the hopes of elaborating on the thought, I added, "Maybe she'll be able to keep track of Imp and stay in touch with us, to keep us informed."
"Maybe. You done a sweep of the area?"
I shook my head. "Need another minute. I'm trying to be thorough in how I check each area for enemies, and Mannequin can see my bugs, so I have to use silk lines to try to catch him. It's slow, and I definitely don't want to miss him. Also, it would be nice to grab some bugs to build up and replenish my stock." I let bugs gather on Lucy's back, depositing spiders and large beetles. The dog didn't seem to mind.
"Right. Good." Grue looked at Bitch, "We'll finish checking out my territory, stop in yours to help you with whatever you need to do for your dogs, then we'll pass through Tattletale's area on the way back to Skitter's."
"I don't really care," Bitch said, looking off into the distance. I was pretty sure she was deliberately looking away from me. It was as though she wanted to pretend I didn't exist.
Grue looked at me and shrugged.
This wasn't going to work. She was too distant, and that was dangerous. Not that it wasn't risky to try to address the problem. It still needed to be done.
Making sure Bitch wasn't looking, I tapped two fists together and then pointed at her.
He shrugged again. He didn't get it?
Drawing from the bugs I had stored in my costume, I drew out words in the air with the bugs flying in tightly controlled formations. 'Confront her'.
He hesitated.
"What?" She snapped her head around to face him. Her eyes flicked over to me and narrowed slightly before they returned to him.
"This whole thing with you not talking? It's not working."
"So?"
"So cut it out. Or at least explain what's going through your head."
"What I think is my business."
"No," I cut in. I couldn't help it. "You're a member of the team, and if you're thinking about joining the Nine, then that matters."
"I'm not!" She snapped.
"But?" I added.
"What?"
"You're not thinking about joining them, but…?" I let the question hang for a second. "Something is eating you up."
"Did you not hear what I said about my thoughts being my business?"
"Bitch," Grue warned.
"What?" She clenched her fist, and I think the dogs could see something in her body language, because they tensed too. She said, "Fuck it. Pisses me off
when you get on my case. Leave me alone."
She kicked Bentley lightly in the sides, and the dog began walking. She kicked him again, and he started running.

Who is missing? "scratches her head" Imp...yes, Imp, I remember her from somewhere. Oh God, don't tell me that Imp is going to spy alone on S9. That would be disastrous for everyone. She might be captured and used as a hostage, in a way that S9 will prevent Undersiders to do any wrong move regarding Tattletale's deal. I have a feeling that Imp, despite having a useful power...I'm not sure what kind power she have, did she mentioned yet? -all I know that is useful and have connection with :ninja:, just made the biggest mistake of her life. Grue, your cousin or sister (don't remember exactly :p) is wild at heart and not exactly the wisest person around. No, but seriously, I don't want anything bad to happen to her and I hope that my feeling will prove to be wrong.

"What?" She snapped her head around to face him. Her eyes flicked over to me and narrowed slightly before they returned to him.
"This whole thing with you not talking? It's not working."
"So?"
"So cut it out. Or at least explain what's going through your head."
"What I think is my business."
"No," I cut in. I couldn't help it. "You're a member of the team, and if you're thinking about joining the Nine, then that matters."
"I'm not!" She snapped.
"But?" I added.
"What?"
"You're not thinking about joining them, but…?" I let the question hang for a second. "Something is eating you up."
"Did you not hear what I said about my thoughts being my business?"
"Bitch," Grue warned.
"What?" She clenched her fist, and I think the dogs could see something in her body language, because they tensed too. She said, "Fuck it. Pisses me off
when you get on my case. Leave me alone."
She kicked Bentley lightly in the sides, and the dog began walking. She kicked him again, and he started running.
I glanced over my shoulder at Grue. How the hell were we supposed to handle this situation?
My phone vibrated at my back, and in my effort to avoid falling off Lucy, I wasn't able to get at it. I fought to make her obey me and stop by pulling on the chains and wrenching her right, then left. She finally halted, and I took the opportunity to grab my phone. I'd missed my window.
It started vibrating again.
"Yes?" I answered.
"You guys busy?" Lisa asked.
"Just patrolling our territories to make sure that the Chosen aren't up to anything," I said. A droplet of water fell on the lens of my mask. I looked up at the overcast sky. Rain?
"Listen, you know that I've got some people working for me, passing on info, right?"
"Sure. Bryce is one of them, right?"
"Right. Well, I've got all of them keeping an eye out for capes and known faces."
"Known faces? Like the members of Empire Eighty-Eight who were outed?"
"Like them. Or Jack, or Bonesaw. But that's not what this is about. Senegal just dropped by Coil's base, and he's passing on information from one of my
scouts. They saw Panacea at one of the shelters in Ballistic's territory."
Bitch is Bitch, she'll never change, leave her alone. As long as she's still by your side, then its ok. This is the best thing you can expect from Bitch. To be loyal to you. :D Also....AMY!!! God, I was so freaking worried for her. She seems fine, at least physically. But mentally....:( Amy can be a great help for them. She's IMMENSE POWERFUL, even if she must touch someone directly on their skin to affect them, which is a weakness, but she can give a hard time to S9 if she can get creative. And brave enough. Especially brave. Like quickly touch Bonesaw's Frankies (I'm gonna call her monsters Frankies from Frankenstein :D) change their loyalty and turn them against Bonesaw. Quickly touch Crawler and destroy his regenerative power, so he'll be vulnerable like everyone else. Or touch Siberian and....if Siberian is a robot, she'll be unaffected but in this way Amy will learn about her nature. Well, easy to say, harder to do. S9 are not the generic stupid villains who'd let heroes approach them enough to get the upper hand over them. Anyway, its interesting to think about Amy's endless possibilities to fuck someone up or learn about what would make them weak.

"I'm not entirely sure I follow."
"All of New Wave live southwest of the Towers, the nice part of downtown. Neither of their houses were hit by the worst of the waves, and none of the Chosen or Merchants are stupid enough to attack them, and they wouldn't succeed if they were. You following me, now?"
"Sort of. You're wondering why she's there. She could just be there giving medical help to the injured."
"My scouts say she's keeping to herself, trying to avoid attracting attention."
"Curious."
"Exactly. Want to go pay a visit?"
I used clouds of bugs to get the attention of my teammates, then waved for them to come my way when they stopped and looked my way.
"I'm not the best person to talk to Panacea. She kind of hates me. Remember the thing at the hospital? The bank robbery?"
"But you have talked to her before. She was there to hear Armsmaster talking about you being a wannabe hero, betraying us. If nothing else, maybe the idea of getting answers about that will get her listening so you can move on to a real conversation."
"Maybe. I don't really think so. Wouldn't somebody else work better? You guys aren't far from that spot."
"Who would you send? Sundancer and Ballistic are threatening by their very nature. I'm not up to it, and she hates me more than she hates you. I wouldn't trust Bitch, Regent or Trickster to handle it, I think you'd agree with me there."
"Genesis?"
Lisa sighed. "We could send Genesis. Is she with you?"
"She's resting. Or at least, she's recuperating from using her power. If something comes up, she told us to call her, and she'll have one of her creations with us in a minute."
"Your call. The Travelers seem decent, but they're hiding something, and I really do think you'd be a better person to talk to her."
"Okay. Text me the address. I'll ask the others and we'll call Genesis in if necessary."
"Cool."
I hung up. Grue and Bitch had already returned to me.
"What is it?" Grue asked me.
"Panacea's in a shelter, and she shouldn't be. Tattletale finds it strange, and I agree with her. She wants us to check Panacea out."
"Why?" Bitch asked. "None of our business."
"It could mean answers. We're looking for a sixth candidate, and we can't protect candidates like you if we don't know who they are. Maybe Panacea is the sixth, maybe someone she knows, like Glory Girl. If nothing else, I can raise the subject of whatever plague Bonesaw has that's supposed to scare the candidates and the local heroes into playing along."
"It also means I have to wait before I check on my dogs and the rest of my territory."
Grue looked my way. Should I capitulate and tell her that we could send Genesis, to give her what she wanted, or would it be better to get her to agree, and risk angering her? As odd as it might be, I gravitated toward the latter option. Bitch responded better to firmness.
"She's supposedly in Ballistic's territory, which is close. Five minutes there, up to five minutes to talk, five minutes to get back," I said.
"Fifteen minutes out of our way," Grue said. "And anything we find out about the Nine or their candidates can potentially help you, Rachel."
She scowled. "Whatever."
I took that for assent and turned Lucy around. With a shout, I got her moving. I kept the phone in one hand while I rode, waiting for Lisa's response.
It didn't matter. She found me before I found her. Or, to be more specific, she found my bugs before I found her. There were enough flies in the city that most people didn't give a second thought to one landing on them, especially if it landed on their clothing. I habitually used my bugs to check people nearby for weapons or masks, and when I checked the people in a building three blocks away, one of the bugs brushed against Panacea.
She must have been able to tell it wasn't an ordinary bug. As she'd done at the bank robbery, she used her power to scramble them and force whatever mechanism my power activated in their systems into a feedback loop.
Before it could incapacitate me and my power, I swept up the bugs with larger dragonflies and flying beetles and promptly murdered them, feeding them to other bugs in the area and pulling them apart.
Panacea was waiting in an alley when we arrived, arms folded. Her brown hair was tucked underneath an army green mosh cap, the brim pulled low.
She looked exhausted, worn out. She had that same devastated look in her eyes that I had seen in her cousin and aunt on the day of the Endbringer attack.
"I see you've got the two other horsemen of the apocalypse with you. Where's number four?"
Of course Panacea doesn't trust Skitter, especially Tattletale. I'm sure she blames Tattletale for Victoria Accident too, since Tattletale basically opened her road to personal Hell, from her point of view. I personally don't blame anyone. Not even Bonesaw, because she never intended for Amy to mind rape Victoria. Fate is the only one to be blamed. She can be such a huge bitch sometimes. Hmm, Panacea compares Undersiders with the Horsemen of Apocalypse. Let's see: War must be Bitch, because she's always obsessed with fight and violence; Conquest must be Regent: the common Crown element and Regent ability to control people's bodies; Death is Grue: his helmet skull and darkness power; Famine is Skitter (I'm thinking at swarms of locusts destroying the crops and letting people to starve). I can't see Tattletale being a Horseman, nothing actually suits her, sorry Panacea, but you're wrong here.

I shook my head. "Horsemen of the apocalypse?"
"Nevermind."
I hopped down from Lucy's back. "I just want to talk."
"I can't outrun those dogs, you've got me outnumbered and you've probably got more weapons than me. I think you're in a position to do whatever you want."
"Good," I said, "Because like I said, I just want to talk. I could get rid of my weapons if that would make you feel any better."
"It wouldn't, really."
I saw her step back a little, and I could tell she was ready to bolt. We were in a position to catch her, for sure, but it would be more detrimental than anything. If we chased her down, any dialogue I had with her afterward would be an interrogation, not a conversation.
"Okay. Grue, Bitch, you want to give us some space? Stay close enough that we can hear each other with shouts?"
"Sure. You checking the area?"
"Yeah. No trouble yet."
He nodded and the pair of them led their dogs away.
"What's going on?" Panacea asked.
"That's what I was going to ask you. Why are you in a shelter, Panacea?"
"Don't call me that."
I raised my hands a bit to stop her. "Okay. Why are you in a shelter, Amy?"
"Why is that any of your business?"
"Because two of my teammates were picked by the Nine, and Jack Slash just started a messed up version of Survivor, with the candidates as the players."
"Survivor?"
If I'd been pressed to say, I would have said her body language shifted fractionally on hearing that. Concern for herself? Her sister? Someone else?
"They didn't give you the info? You didn't get a paper with a list on it?" I asked.
"I was staying somewhere else last night, I heard from a classmate that my aunt was supposedly looking for me. So I legged it."
I could have pressed for more details there, but I suspected she'd keep to the conversation better if I gave her the info instead of demanding it. "They've set themselves a time limit to test and eliminate the six candidates. Their goal is to test the candidates and kill the ones who fail, until there's only one. Ourgoal is to save them. So when Tattletale figures out you're here instead of with your family, and when we know that the sixth candidate is apparently a hero, it gets our attention."
"Who- who are the other candidates?"
"Regent, Bitch, Hookwolf, Armsmaster-"
"Armsmaster?"
"Yeah. Though it might be like Cherish is doing to Regent, more to screw with him than for legit reasons."
"Ok."
"I can see it, though. I've interacted with him. He really did cross the line during the Endbringer attack."
"And the fifth?"
"A non-cape. I don't know the details, but she's in a secure location."
Amy fidgeted. "I'm getting out of here."
"Where?"
"Away. I don't want to be a part of any of this."
"You can't leave."
"Why not? I can find a place to hole up and hide until it blows over."
"So long as you're in Brockton Bay, they've got someone who can watch you. Can watch any of us. She reads emotions, and apparently uses them to find us from half a city away. It's probably how they found the candidates in the first place."
"Then I'll leave the city. I was going to anyways."
"Fuck, I wish I still had the list." I muttered. At a normal speaking volume, I said, "No, you can't leave town, either, because Bonesaw prepared a plague or something. If you are a candidate and you leave the city, they'll use it. They explicitly said they were using it as an incentive for the two heroes that they picked as candidates."
Please, Amy, accept their help. Skitter is the BEST to protect someone and no matter what hard feelings you have for her, this is not a situation where you can allow the luxury to refuse someone because you hate them. Don't be stupid and selfish like this. Only if you work together, you can defeat your common enemy. Well, I'm not so worried about Bonesaw's plagues because if Amy is willing to help, she can find antidote for any plague Bonesaw might come up with. I suppose Amy CAN do that, right? Since she can manipulate the biology of any living being, she should manipulate viruses too, by either creating them or eradicating them. But I'm sure that she'll not leave the City as long as her sister and the rest of her family is still here. Maybe she screwed the relationship with her sister forever (I still think that everything will be ok between them in the future), but she still loves her+ her family is the only family she knows and cares for, in her own way. No, Amy will not leave the city. However, I'm not sure if she'll accept Skitter's help.

"Heroes," Amy muttered. "Right."
"Are you a candidate?"
She fidgeted again. "Bonesaw nominated me."
"Do you know why?"
Bitterly, she said, "Why do you think? She thought I'd be a good fit. And because my powers complement hers."
A good fit? "Just based on my interactions with you, I wouldn't have thought."
"No?" she asked, sarcasm in her tone, "Why wouldn't you have thought? You heard what Tattletale said. I'm the daughter of a villain. I haven't been nice, I haven't been merciful, or forgiving, or considerate. Instead of giving you a second chance, I was spiteful, I toyed with your feelings, and things spiraled out of control. You know how much trouble that caused for my family? The director of the PRT and Legend and Miss Militia were all at my house, lecturing all of us about how serious these events were and how sensitive relations between the various factions were."
"I… I don't want to strike a nerve, or say the wrong thing. I'm not very good at picking the right thing to say. But I forgive you. I know you were tired. You were overworked. You had no reason to like me or to do me any favors. And you healed me anyways."
I could see her tense. Would she storm off? Lash out at me like Bitch would?
She just fell silent, avoiding eye contact with me.
"I don't think you're a monster," I said.
She laughed briefly, and it was a dark utterance with no humor in it. "No?"
"Everyone knows how you visit hospitals. How many people have you helped over the past three years? How many lives have you saved, how many people have you rescued from a lifetime of misery?"
"I hated it," she said. "It was such a burden. So many long hours spent around sick people, and I got numb to it, I stopped caring. Do you know how many hours I've spent awake at night, wishing my powers would just go away, or that some circumstance would come up where I'd make some excusable mistake where they would eventually forgive me, but where I couldn't visit the hospitals anymore?"
It caught me off guard, hearing it, but I managed to get my mental bearings. "You didn't ask for your powers. I'm sure even doctors get worn out, they hate their job, they have bad weeks. Except doctors have fellow staff members, they have friends and everything to go back to, and they're adults. You're still a teenager. You started doing what you were doing at a time when most people didn't. You didn't have the maturity and the defenses against the pain you were seeing that doctors pick up over the course of the first twenty-five years of their lives."
She shook her head. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't make me out to be a good person. Bonesaw has a better idea of who I am than you do. Maybe I wouldn't have thought so, three days ago, when she first met me, but then I fucked up. I proved her right. Every fear I had about being like my dad came true."
I didn't have a reply to that. I couldn't pry, and I couldn't elaborate.
"So you're the supposedly good person who was pretending to be a crook, and I'm the monster who was pretending to be a hero, but when the dust settled, we both wound up being villains. Funny how that works."
"Maybe because doing the right thing is hard," I offered.
She shrugged.
"But you can do the right thing. We need your help. I don't know your circumstances for leaving home. I won't pry. But I think you're one of the few people who can stop Crawler, maybe even Siberian too. We need you around in case they start winning and we wind up with injuries or death, and we need you in case we start winning, and they decide to use that plague out of sheer spite."
"More burdens, more pressures and demands," she said, her voice quiet.
"Yeah. That's the way things play out. But we can help to protect you in exchange. You watch our back, we watch yours."
"I don't know if my conscience can handle taking that final step over to the dark side. Or if I can handle being in Tattletale's company."
Ok, looks at what I personally think about you two (you can't actually look because you'll break the 4th wall and you don't have this power ;)): both of you hate yourselves so much despite doing plenty of good things, both of you put yourselves down every miserable moment in your life, you don't have any self-respect and self-love, Skitter sees herself as a monster because she can't save all the people all the time, even when its beyond her power to save everyone, Amy sees herself a monster because she can't save every sick/injured person in the world (I remember her telling to Dean that she suffers because she can't be everywhere to save everyone; while she's healing someone in a hospital, in another hospital another person is dying)- girls, you're human beings NOT omnipresent Gods, both of you were rejected by the people you romantically love: Skitter by Grue, Amy by Victoria, both of you run away from your fathers, for different reasons. So many similarities between them, I want these girls to become friends and to help each other to become more proud of themselves and emotionally stronger. :) Please, Amy, give yourself a chance. Accept Skitter's helping hand. You'll never regret it.

"We're operating as two distinct groups. Tattletale's with Regent and most of the Travelers. It's me, Grue, Imp, Genesis and Bitch here in the north end of town. Absolute-"
I didn't finish my sentence. Something constricted around my throat, fingertips digging into the windpipe, and the air ceased to flow. I struck behind me, hoping to catch my attacker, but there was nobody there.
I realized what was happening too late, when my feet were hauled off the ground. In the span of a second, I soared up six or seven stories, the counterweight to a nine-foot tall man in featureless white armor who plunged downward to land in a heap on the ground.
Mannequin.
Alright....MY ICECREAM...MY ICECREAM....I NEED MY ICECREAM....SO, SKITTER AND AMY HAD A NICE CONVERSATION AND AMY ALMOST ACCEPTED SKITTER'S SUGGESTION TO ALLOW UNDERSIDERS TO HELP HER BUT.....


He'd repaired himself this fast? Did he have spare parts lying around?
I reached up and tried to wind my arm, wrist and fingers around the chain, to alleviate the pressure on my throat, and to give me a grip in case he decided to let go.
Mannequin hauled himself to his feet and the chain that stretched from his arm to the rooftop and back down to me made me bounce with every small movement. He advanced on Amy, who backed away.
I had to do something.
Calling on the bugs that had covered Lucy, I stirred up a cloud to grab Grue and Bitch's attention, then pulled all of the bugs into the alleyway where Panacea and Mannequin were.
The way I was hanging, with Manneqiun gripping my neck from the back, I had a vantage point to witness what came next. If my bugs weren't enough of a signal to the others, Amy's scream of pain was. Mannequin caught up to her and plunged a knife through her hand, pinning it to the wall.
He left her like that, in enough pain that she couldn't stand, but unable to drop to the ground because her hand was impaled. Turning, he faced the incoming stampede of Grue, Bitch and the four dogs.
While I struggled to escape, drawing my knife with my free hand while gripping the chain with the other, I sent my bugs in to assist. Same tactic as last time.
My bugs drew out lines of silk and plastered them around him. I focused on his free hand and his legs, aiming to hamper his range of movement.
Something was different from last time. I wasn't sure if I would have known just going by the naked eye. But I knew almost right away by the lengths of the silk I was drawing around him. His arms were bigger, and the weight of them was making his body hunch forward a fraction.
I tried to scream, to call out a warning, but I couldn't breathe to do it. I would have used my bugs to draw words, but the pair were moving too fast to read anything I threw their way. I drove the knife at the hand that held me instead.
Bitch ordered Bentley to pounce, Mannequin raised his arm, and the deafening boom of a gun firing filled the alley.
The shot was powerful enough that Bentley was knocked off course. Mannequin simultaneously leaped and retracted the chain that still stretched to the rooftop, swinging across the alley and escaping collision by mere fractions of an inch.
Bentley and Bitch sprawled on the ground.
"noms at icecream while trembling in fear for EVERYONE unfortunate enough to face this MONSTER" Marilyn Monroe said that diamonds are a girl's best friend but...fuck diamonds, for me my best friend will be always icecream and home made cookies. I can't believe I could bring myself to make a Mannequin/fire nation meme, I think I'm getting slowly nuts, without even realizing this. Oh, Gosh, he have a weapon now, possible a shotgun, given the deafening boom. He also have a longer chain, since his arm managed to lift Skitter in the air while his body is on the ground. I think that he took Skitter first out of fight because he knows that she's his strongest adversary and she'd have kicked his ass again. This is a psychology bullshit test coming from Mannequin. He wants to show Amy that Undersiders are weak, defenseless against him and they'll never protect her and she's alone and just as weak and defenseless as them. He wants to destroy the little trust she had in Skitter. Mannequin is the second most skillful at psychology and manipulation master in S9 right after Jack. Coil, you're a fucking amateur in manipulating people compared with these two. You'll never be not even half as skillful as them. :D Please, Amy, don't let yourself manipulated by Mannequin. Undersiders are not weak, never weak. They can still protect you. It happened that Mannequin took them by total surprise. Nobody is perfect.

I hacked at the hand that held me again while Grue threw darkness over the pair of them.
My swarm-sense gave me a picture of what happened next. Grue dodged to one side, and Mannequin followed him, his arm unerringly moving to follow his target. My bugs were then blown out of the air as another shot was fired at Grue and Sirius. I could feel it spread out, hitting multiple points on the pair of them. A shotgun?
Lucy pounced from where she'd been moving in Sirius' wake, and she landed half-on top of the chain that held me. I surged another three or four feet up, and the hand caught where it fixed on a loop of metal that had been sunken into the corrugated metal of the roof. This was where the chain was threaded.
I hacked at the hand again, while gripping the metal loop. The knife caught inside a joint, and I worked at it, trying to bend it or pry the joint apart. I couldn't really see what I was doing, and the bugs I had on the surface of the hand weren't as useful as I'd hoped.
Below me, Lucy and Mannequin fought, the smaller Bastard dancing around the edges, trying to find an avenue for attack, or hampering Mannequin's movements. Lucy managed to get on top of him.
A third gunshot sounded. There was a long pause, where nothing and nobody moved, and then a fourth gunshot. Lucy slumped over, crashing on top of Bastard.
Mannequin stood, taking a moment to use a knife to cut at the threads that wound around his arms and legs. When he was done, he disconnected the chain that ran to the hand that held me aloft. I was left hanging from the metal ring.
He watched me for several long seconds, his head raised. He abandoned his grip on the back of my neck, and his arm dropped into his waiting hand. The
chain fed through the metal loop, running over my fingertips, before it was gone.
A few seconds passed, and I realized he was still staring up at me, one finger pointing at me.
Me? He wanted something from me?
No, he turned away, striding past Amy, who was still impaled to the wall by her hand, and stopped when he stood over Bitch.
Drawing another knife from a point I couldn't see on his body, he stabbed Bentley in between the eyes.
He turned to look at me one last time, and then he was gone.
My hands were tired from riding the dog, and while my gloves afforded me some traction on the metal loop, the fabric seemed to slide under my sweating fingers. I tried to haul myself up enough to get one leg over the edge of the roof, and nearly lost my grip.
My hands wouldn't give me enough of a hold, and I didn't trust my knife to bite deep enough into the concrete to serve any better. I let it fall and raised my other hand to the metal to get a better grip.
Again, I tried to swing one leg up. This time I got it over the roof's edge.
I ran pell-mell for the door that led into the crowded building below me, using bugs to get the general shape of the hallways and find my way. Some people shrieked as I ran into and through the crowd, out the front doors and back to the alley.
Grue was standing, pulling the knife free from Amy's hand so she could slump to the ground. Bitch knelt on the ground beside Lucy, while Bentley lay on the ground, the knife still embedded in his skull, and both Sirius and Bastard hung back, limping as they moved, blood leaking from a dozen dime-sized wounds in their flesh.
A low growl tore free from Bitch's throat. But I knew before I looked that Lucy hadn't made it. Two shotgun blasts directly to the chest cavity.
I didn't know what to say.
"You led him right to me!" Amy accused us, sounding more than slightly hysterical.
:cry::cry::cry: Poor Lucy and Bentley and POOR Bitch. She lost two more dogs after the episode with Leviathan Battle. She's like a mother who lost her children, I perfectly understand her pain and I almost feel it. Mannequin just took two children away from their mother, by killing them. Got it, such a cruel analogy. Maybe he expects her to follow a pattern and become freaking nuts, starting her own war against humanity. Mannequin not only manipulated Amy but also tried to manipulate Bitch too. Two birds being hit with the same stone. Well, everyone did whatever they could against him, if Skitter wouldn't have been hold by his arm, she would have kicked his ass with his own shotgun, I'm absolute sure about this. If I were in Amy's place, I'd still accept their help, I'm not easily manipulated by people, not even when I'm in my weakest state of mind. And I'm telling this from my own experience. I suck at manipulating others, but I can't be manipulated either.

"I… he slipped past the silk tripwires I put around the area. And they can find you," I said, the words clumsy, made worse by my sense of disorientation over the surprise attack and the distraction of the pain in my neck. "Anyways. They can find you anyways, with Cherish."
"My hand. Hurts," Amy said, ignoring my fractured explanation.
"Heal yourself," Grue said. He wasn't looking at her. His attention was on the knife he'd pulled from her hand.
"I can't! I'm immune to my own power."
"Calm down," he said. "Panic won't get us anywhere."
"Fuck you! Fuck you all!" Amy said. Then she ran. I didn't have the air in my lungs or the heart to chase her, and both Grue and Bitch were too hurt to give chase. I could run and catch up, sure, but what would I accomplish?
For now, it was better to be here, with my teammates, and make sure they were okay.
"She's dead," Bitch said, quiet.
"I'm sorry," I replied. "We'll get them, okay? We'll fuck them up."
She looked at me, and the anger and hatred that had colored her expression before was gone. She looked forlorn.
Grue handed me one of the knives, then handed one to Bitch.
It was short, only four and a half inches long, and there was a word inscribed on the steel with a smoky texture, so the six large capital letters and the row of smaller characters were pale against the gleaming, bloodied steel.
CHANGE.
2200/2012164
"Bitch has her deadline for her test, and Amy does too. Ten in the evening, and I think it's for tomorrow. Jack said his test always involved someone changing themselves in a way that costs them something."
"I'm going to kill him," Bitch growled. "Fucking tests. Killing Lucy, stabbing Bentley."
A minute passed as we pulled ourselves together, checking our injuries.
"He left me alive," I said, as the realization dawned on me. "He didn't kill any of us, but he had an excuse and the ability to kill me. Why didn't he?"
"The world revolves around you, doesn't it?" Bitch snapped.
I was trying to think of how to reply to that when the thought struck me. The world, my world. My people. Mannequin had been nearby when I was in my
territory.
"He's going to hurt me by going after my gang."
Oh, only Lucy is dead, Bentley is only injured. Still, its bad. Amy will return, she's now scared out of her mind and injured and she needs time (too bad she can't heal herself; but I don't understand why since she can bypass Manton Effect. Why she's immune at her own power if Manton Effect can't stop her? This is strange and unfair in the same time). As for you, Skitter, FUCKING RUN AND FUCKING SAVE YOUR PEOPLE FROM THAT FUCKING SHELL MONSTER. YOUR PEOPLE- YOUR PRIORITY. AND STOP BLAMING YOURSELF IF HE'LL MANAGE TO KILL FEW. YOU MAKE ME WANT TO TEAR MANNEQUIN APART WITH MY BARE HANDS AND USE EVERY PIECE OF HIS BODY TO BEAT YOU HALF TO DEATH. Killing two birds with a stone. Not so bad.

Good night and sleep well, friends.
 
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I was waiting for this one with a lot of trepidation. Hits you right in the feels, doesn't it?
 
Amy will return, she's now scared out of her mind and injured and she needs time (too bad she can't heal herself; but I don't understand why since she can bypass Manton Effect. Why she's immune at her own power if Manton Effect can't stop her? This is strange and unfair in the same time).

Long story short, she isn't immune to the Manton Effect, the guy that told you that was just wrong.
As originally explained to Taylor (and by extension us) the Manton effect is a series of limits most powers have, the most important of which is that they don't work directly on living things unless it only works on organic living things.
Therefore neither Panacea, nor Skitter nor Regents powers counts as bypassing the manton effect.
It's worth noting here that "directly" is very strictly defined, so shooting someone with a beam of fire and them getting burnt doesn't count - it means stuff like making the fire appear inside people's skulls thus killing them directly.

Also note that this is just the most important and common aspect of the manton effect, it also includes some other things, like people often being immune/resistant to their own powers.
 
I was waiting for this one with a lot of trepidation. Hits you right in the feels, doesn't it?

Yes, I was pretty sad about Bitch and her dogs but I think the next Chapter will hit me worse than the previous one, because there are civilians (especially children) involved. Until Skitter and others will arrive to her territory, Mannequin will possible kill already a considerable number of people. Besides, I'm also worried for Charlotte and Sierra. I got emotionally attached to these girls and I'll suffer if one of them will die.
 
Long story short, she isn't immune to the Manton Effect, the guy that told you that was just wrong.
As originally explained to Taylor (and by extension us) the Manton effect is a series of limits most powers have, the most important of which is that they don't work directly on living things unless it only works on organic living things.
Therefore neither Panacea, nor Skitter nor Regents powers counts as bypassing the manton effect.
It's worth noting here that "directly" is very strictly defined, so shooting someone with a beam of fire and them getting burnt doesn't count - it means stuff like making the fire appear inside people's skulls thus killing them directly.

Also note that this is just the most important and common aspect of the manton effect, it also includes some other things, like people often being immune/resistant to their own powers.

Then how she can affect biology and change people's emotions if she's still limited by Manton Effect? Manton Effect won't stop someone from affecting people's bodies/minds? Amy can infect someone with a virus if she'd like to do that. She can make people gay, for God sake. What is the difference between her and Narwal? Narwal can create forcefields inside someone's body but Amy can give someone heart attack or make them paraplegic or instantly kill them, like she did with Bonesaw's creations. I won't be surprised if she can liquefy organs too. So why Amy is limited and Narwal isn't? What exactly make Amy limited except for not being able to heal herself?
 
Then how she can affect biology and change people's emotions if she's still limited by Manton Effect? Manton Effect won't stop someone from affecting people's bodies/minds? Amy can infect someone with a virus if she'd like to do that. She can make people gay, for God sake. What is the difference between her and Narwal? Narwal can create forcefields inside someone's body but Amy can give someone heart attack or make them paraplegic or instantly kill them, like she did with Bonesaw's creations. I won't be surprised if she can liquefy organs too. So why Amy is limited and Narwal isn't? What exactly make Amy limited except for not being able to heal herself?

The relevant part is the "Unless the power only work on living/organic things".

Amy can do that stuff because her power is something like "alter the biology of target touched" which only works on living things and therefore it doesn't count as bypassing the manton effect. If Amy's power also allowed her to make similar changes to say a plastic chair or a car then it wouldn't be Manton limited, but it doesn't.

Narwal's power on the other hand is "create forcefields" and she can create them anywhere*, her power does not only work on living things, and therefore doesn't get that exception to the manton effect.



*presumably with some sort of range or line-of-sight or something, but that doesn't really matter for purposes of the Manton Effect.

EDIT: to summarise Narwhal isn't Manton limited because creating forcefields inside people isn't the only thing she can do. She can also create forcefields outside of people.

Amy is manton limited because she can only alter the biology of living/organic things. she cannot do the same to, for instance, a car.
 
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Then how she can affect biology and change people's emotions if she's still limited by Manton Effect? Manton Effect won't stop someone from affecting people's bodies/minds? Amy can infect someone with a virus if she'd like to do that. She can make people gay, for God sake. What is the difference between her and Narwal? Narwal can create forcefields inside someone's body but Amy can give someone heart attack or make them paraplegic or instantly kill them, like she did with Bonesaw's creations. I won't be surprised if she can liquefy organs too. So why Amy is limited and Narwal isn't? What exactly make Amy limited except for not being able to heal herself?
The manton effect, basically, is that the powers can not do things that they should be able to do (example, fautline and amy).
Fautline can not affect the organic matter, in spite of being the same, it would not be able to do anything to the living bones, but it would be able to destroy calcium not "alive".
Amy is limited by the manton effect, unable to manipulate her own biology, but can manipulate any other type of biology.
However, maybe I'm wrong.
 
The manton effect, basically, is that the powers can not do things that they should be able to do (example, fautline and amy).
Fautline can not affect the organic matter, in spite of being the same, it would not be able to do anything to the living bones, but it would be able to destroy calcium not "alive".
Amy is limited by the manton effect, unable to manipulate her own biology, but can manipulate any other type of biology.
However, maybe I'm wrong.

It's also important to remember that they a lot of the things affected are likely arbitrary. When Shielder or Bastion sets up a forcefield, is it prevented if there is a fly in the way? How about a bacteria? A virus? At what point, precisely, is dead wood no longer affected by the Manton limit? Can Amy manipulate her skin, hair, or nails, because they are dead cells? Live and Dead are not natural types, nor are Self and Other, not really, so the powers end up being quite odd.
 
It's also important to remember that they a lot of the things affected are likely arbitrary. When Shielder or Bastion sets up a forcefield, is it prevented if there is a fly in the way? How about a bacteria? A virus? At what point, precisely, is dead wood no longer affected by the Manton limit? Can Amy manipulate her skin, hair, or nails, because they are dead cells? Live and Dead are not natural types, nor are Self and Other, not really, so the powers end up being quite odd.
Yes, the limits of the powers seem very artificial and selective.
 
Interlude 13½
Hi, friends :). No more icecream for me today because there's no Chapter featuring Mannequin depopulating Hive (ExNihilo proposed Hive for Skitter's Lair so I'm gonna call it like this) but an Interlude Interlude 13½ (Donation Bonus) We're going to abandon Skitter and her desperate attempts to protect her people and see this general and unstoppable craziness that plagued Worm since the apparition of S9 through the eyes of another person. Sierra? Charlotte? Maybe I'll need my icecream after all? (Gosh I feel like Dinah with the whole "my icecream"; this is how desperate I'm) Or I'm gonna see a certain character that I don't remember too much about, spying on S9? I know is a girl, I know she wants to spy on S9, I remember that Grue was mad about this particular character's missing, but this is everything I know about her. :D Maybe this Interlude will be told from her own POV? Maybe she'll be the star of it and I'm going to learn more about her? Alright, let's start.

"Sam! Sam!" Celia's voice was grating and nasal.
"I'm coming!" The heavyset man grumbled, as he made his way into the living room. Celia sat on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. The white of her t-shirt and panties was a stark contrast to her dark skin. Sam leered at the woman. She was good-looking for her age, slim, though her breasts sagged behind her shirt without the benefit of a bra.
"You said you were five minutes ago, asswipe. Takes you five minutes to find your wallet?"
"Needed to piss. Your fatass friend was in your bathroom, so I pissed in your sink."
Celia kicked under the coffee table to strike his shin.
Sam just smiled and stepped back. "Kidding. I went off the fire escape."
"That's not any better!"
"It's all water and shit down there. Any place that doesn't smell like hot garbage smells like a toilet. Here. Stop bitching." He threw a plastic movie rental card at her.
She cut open a plastic wrapped block of powder and shook a small amount of the powder onto the coffee table. She used the laminated card to cut it into lines, a set on each side of the table, with none in front of her.
"You're not having any?"
"I told you. I'm pregnant."
"You're too old to be pregnant," Sam commented. She kicked him again.
"Not that old!"
Jennifer emerged from the washroom and stopped in the doorway, staring at the scene.

"I didn't think you'd actually use any of the stuff."
"Jen, hon," Celia said, "We've got enough to go around. Even if we only sold half, we'd be made in the shade for five or ten years."

Oh, ok. We got 3 new characters. Celia and Sam, possible married or just girlfriend and boyfriend. Celia is pregnant, Jennifer is either Celia's daughter or her sister of a friend and they're drug users, precisely heroin addiction. They seem to be drug dealers too. I wonder if they're connected with Merchants, maybe they're their families...

"And you just took it?"
"Leaders of the Merchants got killed, everyone else decided to run off with what they could carry of the stockpiles. Sam and I decided to play it smart. Sam got his truck, and I guarded the stash from the other assholes. Paid off."
"I… what is it?"
"Little bit of everything. Come, sit. Try some."
"What is it?"
Sam seated himself at the table, by one set of the lines of powder. He picked up a pinch and put it on his tongue. "H."
"No way," Jennifer said. She dropped into one of the felt-covered chairs at the far end of the room.
Aisha had to hop out of the way so she didn't get sat on.
Jesus, its Aisha's DISTURBING family. Celia is Aisha and Brian's mother (now I remember who is Aisha and what is her connection to Brian :D), Sam is possible her boyfriend (the one who abused Aisha or maybe another one) and Jennifer is Celia's friend. Celia is pregnant with her third child. She's addicted to drugs, the reason why Brian wants to take Aisha in his care. Poor Aisha, poor Brian, life sucks for them with such a "model" of a bitch mother. :(

She watched the dialogue between her mother, her mother's boyfriend of the week and her mother's new friend with a dispassionate expression. Seeing this scene, she didn't really feel much. A little disappointment. Embarrassment. Disgust.
No, it was less this scene and more the discovery that her mother was pregnant that nailed her in the gut with a profound kind of sadness.
The first place her mind went, before joy at the idea of having a brother or sister, before anger at her mom for letting it happen and not using protection, was hope.
"Sam, do you have any papers?"
"Rolling papers? I thought you were going clean."
"It's just weed. I need to have something."
"Isn't that bad for the kid-in-progress?"
"It's weed, dumbass. Nothing they tell you about it is true. Kid isn't going to wind up addicted from birth or anything, 'cause it's not addictive. Right?"
"Sure," he reached into his back pocket and slipped a packet to her, along with a dime bag.
Aisha bit her lip. Maybe hope was the wrong word, because she didn't really feel anything on the subject. But she knew it would probably be better if her mom miscarried and the kid was spared this shit.
How much of Aisha's problems were because of her mom's lack of self-control and how many others were because of this environment? She'd grown up with a mom who'd never mentally or emotionally aged past fourteen or fifteen. A new man in the house every week or two, with his own idea of how things should work, Celia generally content to let him run things however he wanted.

FUCK THIS MISERABLE BITCH. SHE'S TAKING DRUGS, DESPITE BEING PREGNANT. WEEDS ARE STILL DRUGS, YOU FUCKING CUNT!!! This piece of shit of a woman makes me so ANGRY. Women like her doesn't deserve to have children. She's going to give birth to an innocent child with either physically or mental problems because she can't stay away from her destructive vice. She's a whore, she doesn't give a fuck about her children, she loves drugs more than she loves them, she's someone that I'd have wanted to die from an overdose if she wan't pregnant (but I don't want her baby to die as well :().

Aisha tried not to think about the men. It was like having a broken arm; so long as she didn't move it, so long as she didn't think about it, it was okay, a dull throb in the back of her mind. Something she could ignore. But even a stray thought could remind her that the arm was broken, and then it sometimes took days before she could get out of that head space. There was no distraction that worked, because the fact that she was consciously lookingfor a distraction only reminded her of what she was trying to distract herself from.
Of course, there was no way to avoid the countless reminders in everyday life that would remind her of Guy, or Bridge, or Darren, or Lonnie. Thinking about a broken arm was one such reminder.
Being ignored by her teammates and told to go to her room and play along for everyone else's sake was another. How many afternoons had she come home from school, only for her mom or one of her mom's boyfriends to shoo her off or bribe her to leave the apartment for a bit?
Pissed her off. She didn't need that from her brother, too.
"Come on, Jennifer," Celia urged her friend. She took a long draw from the spliff she held in her fingers. "Oh fuck! Sam, you jackass! This isn't just weed, is it?"
"Thought it was."
"There's a kick to it. Amp or something." Celia took another puff. "Amp. Hey, Jen, join in. Have some of what Sam's having."
"But H is fucking scary," Jen protested.
"So you hear. But why is it scary?"
"It's addictive."

The more I read into this Interlude, the more I hate the second worst mother of the story (after Rachel's last adoptive mother) and the more I feel sorry for Aisha. Speaking about Aisha. I remember that I promised to do something....Ghostbusters Theme Song, here we go, baby. I suppose that Aisha is using her power now since Jennifer didn't noticed her when she dropped into chair. So, she's visiting her house, while using her power, before she'll go spying on S9? Gosh, Aisha, you should't have done that, you're going to be very depressive and nervous when you'll go after S9 and these intense negative emotions will be very easy to be read for Cherish and a piece of cake for her team to catch you. You're filling yourself with such powerful dark emotions.

Aisha tuned out the sound of her mother and Sam cajoling the woman and walked over to the table. Her mom didn't notice her. Nobody ever noticed her, and they noticed even less ever since she'd gotten her power. It was like a dark joke, a grim comedy. Just when she'd started to figure things out, grow up and catch people's eye, the world went to hell and she got her powers. Now she became invisible if she lost her concentration.
Not that it was invisibility, really. It was memories. People forgot her as soon as they saw her, to the point that they didn't register her presence. She could feel it, her power rolling over her skin, jabbing outward, invisible to sight, touch and anything else, making contact with the people around her and pushing those memories away.
And like her metaphor comparing her memories to a broken arm, her power seemed to respond to the attention of her subjects; the harder they tried to
remember and focus on her, the faster she slipped through their minds.
Ok, I'm doing this review and I have who is the central character of the Interlude. Sam? Celia? Jennifer? "concentrates harder" I remember....I remember someone called Aisha, Brian's sister, visiting her fucked up family before...before going to spy on S9. Yep, this Interlude is from her POV, I should not forget again. My shame :redface: Alright, so Aisha's power is always on and she needs to concentrate in order to make herself noticeable. Its like the opposite of every power. While all the others need to concentrate to use their powers, Aisha have to concentrate to NOT use her power. Gosh, her power is a gift but also a curse. For example, if she's injured to the point of unconsciousness, nobody will be capable to help her because they won't notice her as long as she's not conscious to shut down her power. She can die in the middle of a huge crowd and nobody will lift a finger to help her, not because they don't want but because they can't. Besides, she have to make herself visible all the time- Imagine how much she needs to concentrate to stay visible for a hour. Well, now that I understand how her WEIRD ASS power really works, I think that its rather a curse than a gift. "sighs" Poor girl.

The metaphor applied in another way, too. Her power operated on its own, doing its thing, and if she very casually noted what it was doing, without pushing it forward or holding it back, she could feel it doing something else. As if it was ready to push away memories that didn't relate to her, exactly. It never did.
Any time it built up enough that it came close to doing anything, she noticed, and it retreated like a turtle pulling its head into its shell.
Frustrating. Her power didn't do anything because she wanted it to. It worked only if she surrendered to it, let it act on its own. Pushing it to work harder had the opposite effect.
How easy would it be to just carry this stuff away? She could hand it to Coil for some brownie points, and he could decide what to distribute. It would be out of her mother's hands, and money would become a limiter on her mother's habit. If the drugs weren't around, maybe Sam would leave.
Maybe, if Aisha got rid of the drugs, her mom would have an excuse to get things back on track, somehow. The city was paying people who joined the clean-up crews. Three square meals, simple and bland but they gave the essential nutrients, and they gave you twenty dollars for nine hours of work. Fuck around or slack off, and they just kicked you off the crew for the day, no pay.
Idle hopes. Aisha had spent long years wishing her mom could pull it together, dating back to just after the divorce, when a bad day was still better than most good days were now. Or maybe that was nostalgia and a child's eye view.
No. If she got rid of the drugs, it was more likely that someone would erupt in anger. Sam or her mom, getting violent, verbally or otherwise. It would do more harm than good.
She sat down on the coffee table, directly opposite her mother. Reaching forward, she plucked the spliff from her mother's lips and dropped it, grinding it under her toes.
Her mother blinked a few times, then reached for her rolling papers.

Aisha used her hand to cover the papers and whispered, "No."
Again, the dazed blinking. Her mother asked, "Sam? Got any more papers?"

So, every object touched by Aisha becomes unnoticeable just like her (I have to concentrate a lot to remember Aisha, ok? This Interlude is an intense exercise of memorization. I'm gonna have headaches even before reaching its end :lol:rofl:), that's the explanation why nobody noticed her fire axe during Protectorate Headquarters Battle. She's like a person with invisibility power who can make objects invisible as well. But her "invisibility" is in fact the inability of people to remember her. Man, I believed till now that Coil, Night and Labyrinth have the weirdest and most disturbing powers, but this girl....Aisha, right.....proved that their powers are child's play in comparison with hers. She have the strangest power. As for you, madame Celia Bitch, it looks like you have a serious case of poltergeist in your house. Hide your drugs, hide your man, and fucking call the Or Winchester Brothers.


"I just gave you a full package."
"The hell? Maybe that hit me harder than I thought," Aisha's mother giggled.
Aisha stared her mother in the eyes. She didn't deactivate her power. "Mom. You gotta stop."
"Where are the rest of the papers, Sam?" her mom asked, oblivious.
"Kitchen."
"But I don't want to get up. I'm comfy," Celia whined.
"You keep going down this road, your kid is going to be born without a face or something," Aisha said, her voice quiet. "You know how hard school was for me? Even as far back as kindergarten, I couldn't sit still.
Teacher tells me three things, and by the time they've gotten to the third, I've forgotten the first. And Brian doesn't have any of that."
"Go get some papers, Sam. Sam McSamsam. Sammy-sam. Samster-"
"I don't want to get up any more than you do," Sam growled. "You're not one of the talkative ones, are you? I like it quiet."
"Mom," Aisha said, as if she could get her mom's attention. Ironically enough, she knew that if she deactivated her power, she'd have even less chance of talking to her mom. It wasn't just the horned mask and the black costume. She'd never had anyone just sit down and listen to her. Dad ignored her, mom was self-centered and Brian was too focused on what needed to be done that he ignored everything else.
"Mom. You're going to have some fucked up kid, and then you're going to die of an OD before it's even grown up. It's not fair that you leave some kid that's more retarded than me, or some deformed freak for Brian to take care of. Not fair on him, and it's not fair on the kid to make them put up with the dick, either."
"Fine," her mother said, standing. "I'll get the papers myself."
Aisha sighed. Was it cowardice that kept her from confronting her mother, or the knowledge backed by years of experience that it wouldn't make a difference?

"sighs" Aisha (even if she's in her costume, I will keep calling her like this because I don't remember her codename. I can barely remember her name :p) have ADHD, she sees herself as an retard, HATES drugs, HATE her mother's lifestyle, wants for her little brother or sister to be aborted rather than being birthed with physical or mental problems, wants so much to be noticeable by her mother but her mother ignores her even when she makes herself noticeable, this DISGUSTING and IDIOTIC CUNT of a "mother" only cares about herself, not even about the baby in her belly. I already liked....Aisha until this Interlude, but right now I sympathize with her a lot, she's a good kid with a terrible life and an equally terrible power. :(:(

Maybe, if everything with the Nine worked out and Coil got control of the city, maybe she could get her mom some help, or report her to the police.
But not now, not when things were like this, when she had to prove she deserved her place in the group.
Abandoning her mother to a noisy search of the kitchen, Aisha headed into her old room.
Her room smelled like sex, and faintly of urine. Her mom had apparently had a party since Aisha had left.
Holding her breath, she opened her closet door. She pushed past the clothes she'd stolen, shoplifted and bought, and past the old clothes she couldn't or wouldn't wear anymore. Her closet was in layers, and each
layer held clothes and trinkets from a different era.
Her girl guide stuff was in the very back, too wrinkled by years to wear. Her dad had pushed her into that. He'd wanted her to have structure. After a year and a half, even he had pulled her out. A bad fit. She didn't have the personality type for it.
Around the girl guide stuff, she found a small tape recorder and an old pair of binoculars. After finding an old backpack that had never been emptied of the school supplies, she found some notebooks that had only been filled in about a third of the way. She tore out those pages and tucked the notebooks under one arm.
Everything went into a compact black handbag, along with her taser and knives.
Small things. Nothing she couldn't have bought in a well stocked convenience store, maybe. But she would operate best if she was relaxed, and having some personal items made her feel better.
That only left the problem of finding them.
They'd attacked the Merchants, and observing her mom had given her the chance to find out where. It was a starting point.

It was worse than she'd expected. She ducked under the police tape and pushed one officer out of her way as she stepped into the area. Police cars and PRT vans had formed a broad perimeter, with police tape strung between them. She momentarily wondered why they didn't have the wooden barricades. It was flimsy as security went.
It was drizzling, and the small amounts of rain did little to clean the streets of the blood that spattered it. Water soaked into the white and brown sheets that had been draped over the bodies that still waited for someone to clean them up. The brown, she realized, was dried blood.

Now, filled with negative emotions, Aisha is following the massacre committed by S9 to try to find them and watch them. This is not going to end well, she'll make a mistake and she'll fall right into Cherish's claws. By catching Aisha and taking her as a hostage, Cherish will impress Jack in such a way that maybe he'll be convinced to give her a second chance. Its a huge opportunity for Cherish and she'll be dumb as fuck if she'll miss it. But I seriously hope that she's dumb as fuck. For Aisha's sake.

Aisha picked her way through the fallen. The worst of the carnage was at the edges, as if some invisible line had been drawn that nobody was permitted to cross, and in the center, where the masses of people had gathered before being murdered together.
She'd hoped for a lead. A piece of evidence, or an overheard tidbit of information from the cops.
No such luck.
There was an overabundance of evidence. By the time the cops processed everything here and managed to identify the bodies, the leaves would be falling off the trees and the Nine would be long gone, one way or another. The cops weren't talking, either. They were working silently, or the things they were saying weren't interesting. Catching the Nine wasn't their job. If they found something worthwhile, they would pass it on to the local capes, probably.
No. If there was something to be found, it wouldn't be here. She headed to the edge of the scene, where the police cars had all stopped. There were still spots and spatters of blood here and there, and bloody footprints, but not much. She walked around the police and the cars to check each set out. In every case, it seemed, the bloodied victims had either fallen where they lay or disappeared. Ambulances?
Having checked the area, she moved further down the street to see the next closed-off alleyway. The same thing. A few more bloody footprints, but nothing beyond that.
The third blockade offered something. There was a spot where the blood was thicker, which didn't match up with the other spaces. The trail extended further than it did elsewhere.
Looking around, she spotted a smear of blood on the side of a building, three stories up.
Okay. So maybe they'd gone this way.
The trail of breadcrumbs that the blood provided were slowly being eroded or masked by the light rain. The water raised the oils from the cracks in the road, giving the ground a rainbow sheen.

The signs of blood faded too soon, and Aisha could only guess whether she had taken the wrong road, gone too far or if the rain had cleared it away. She might have given up right then, but she saw a group of men standing outside of an apartment building.
It was only when she got close that she saw the badge clipped to the front of one of their jackets. A detective. There was blood on the door that led into the apartment lobby.
The elevator wouldn't be working. She headed for the stairwell, only to find more blood. It was as though a body had been dragged.
Going forward was a stupid idea, she knew. Brian and Skitter had gone into way too much fucking depth about the risks. Still, that hadn't stopped her before.
She got her taser and knife from her bag and made her way upstairs.
Third floor up, blood on the door leading into the hall. More blood trailing down the hallway, stopping at one apartment.
She double checked that her power was active and pushed her way inside.
Only a few of the Nine were present. Crawler slept with his ponderous head on paws that were crossed over one another, his back rising and falling with each deep breath. He was large enough that the highest part of his back rose nearly to the ceiling with each breath he drew in through his nostrils. Only half of the eyes on his body were closed, covered with thick, dark gray lids.
Shatterbird and Burnscar were on the couch, Burnscar stretched out with her head on the armrest, her feet propped up on Shatterbird's lap. She held a graphic novel on her stomach with one hand and created flames in the other, shaping them to match the people she saw as she flicked from page to page. Shatterbird was sitting upright, a novel in her hands.

Gosh, she's walking in the same apartment where some S9 members are temporary staying. Including Mister Universe, the second most powerful and prettiest who looks strangely cute while he's sleeping- reminds me of a dog, one of Bitch's monstrous dogs :D. Not just Shatterbird likes to read, looks like Burnscar shares her hobby too. No wonder why S9 are so intellectual and well read in general. Now I imagine Jack reading a random book, sitting on a random bench, in a random park, next to a random young woman. The woman will be like: "He's so hawt omg... He also reads a book about medicine. He must be a doctor. A sexy hot doctor. I'm so lucky." And Jack will be like, smiling charmingly at her: "In fact, my dear, I'm reading a book who'll help me dissect living people more efficiently. Want to be my guinea pig?"

Bonesaw stood over the dining room table, with a mechanical spider-thing on the opposite side of the table, assisting her. A young man was on the table itself, his wrists and ankles tied down. His torso was open from collar-bone to crotch, his ribs splayed apart. Bonesaw and her mechanical spider were elbow deep in the contents of his torso.
The spiders.
Aisha moved quickly aside as a spider moved from the kitchen, past her and to the table. Whatever cameras or artificial intelligence it used, it didn't seem to notice her. It handed Bonesaw a diet cola that the little girl opened with bloody fingers and drank.
With a little more confidence, Aisha moved further inside, giving a wide berth to Crawler and Burnscar's foot-high images of flame.
Holding her weapons, Aisha stood next to Shatterbird, at one end of the couch.
Aisha had never killed anyone, but here she was, holding a lethal weapon. She could slice Shatterbird's throat and they wouldn't even realize she was there.

Yes, but Burnscar is right next to Shattebird and she'll react quickly if you'll manage to kill Shatterbird. She'll incinerate you, Aisha. You may be unnoticeable but you are not invincible or immortal. And if you kill Burnscar, Shatterbird will cut you with all the glass existing in that apartment. Crawler is a GIANT NO so only one left is Bonesaw. Her spiders can't notice you so its good but I'm sure she have like dozens of safeguards implanted in each part of her body so she might be immune to your taser and your knife. You'll not stand a chance against her, she's well prepared. Besides...can you bring yourself to kill a child? Even a murderous one?

They would, she suspected, realize that Shatterbird was dead or dying. There was a fifty-fifty chance, anyways, that it would force them out of whatever effect her powers had on their brains. It had happened to her before.
Except that Shatterbird would kill her in her last moments, using the glass that had been swept to the corners of the room, or one of the others would. Burnscar or Crawler could deal a hell of a lot of damage, even if they didn't know who they were attacking.
Slowly, she walked over to Bonesaw, navigating around the drones. Could she kill the kid?
On the one hand, Bonesaw was the one who kept the other members going. Removing her would take a lot of problems off the board. She could finish off Bonesaw and run for cover in the kitchen, out of Burnscar and Shatterbird's line of fire. From there, it was only steps to the front door and safety.
On the other hand, it was still murder, and it was a kid. A kid that had a hundred kills under her belt.

I was right, she's trying to kill Bonesaw. Honestly, if I were in Ai....Aisha's place, I'd have a HARD time to decide over killing Bonesaw. Blame my annoyingly weakness for children, but I'll just stay there, trying to decide if I can kill her or not. I'll stay there for long minutes, asking myself if I'll ever dare to look again in the mirror if I'll kill Bonesaw or if I'll ever forgive myself if I allow more innocent people to die because I can't kill a child. I'll be trapped between two moral crisis. And maybe I'll accidentally turn off my power. Imagine everyone surprised reaction when they'll notice me. And I'll just stay there, shivering like I'm in a freezer and asking them: Would you accept another girl in your literature club? I like to read too, you know....:D Yes, I can handle stressful and dramatic situation pretty well. :p

A squeaking sound distracted her from her thoughts. It was like air being let out of a balloon, but in shorter spurts. Bonesaw? No, the girl wasn't making any noise. The mechanical spider? No. Not the spider either.
Stepping as close to Bonesaw and the spider as she dared, Aisha investigated the sounds. Where were they coming from?
Bonesaw smiled, "You're going to have to speak up if you want me to hear you, Jonathan."
Jonathan?
Aisha looked down at the body, and realized the heart was beating inside Bonesaw's hands. The man's eyes were moving, and his lips moved as he struggled and failed to make words come up through his windpipe.
The surge of horror and disgust gave Aisha the strength to cast aside her doubts.
"Sorry kid," she said.
She plunged the knife into Bonesaw's bare throat.
Bonesaw screamed, shrill and loud, which caught Aisha off guard. With a knife in her throat, the girl was screaming?
Reacting more on instinct than wit, Aisha pulled the knife out and then slashed it horizontally across Bonesaw's throat.
She'd expected a spray of blood or gurgling. Neither happened. Bonesaw screamed again.
So she pulled the knife free and stabbed Bonesaw in one eye. The blade scraped against the bone of Bonesaw's eye socket.
Flame erupted and pieces of glass came to life around Aisha. She backed away quickly as a wall of flame rolled over Jonathan on the table and divided her from Bonesaw. There was a rumble and the sound of falling furniture as Crawler stood.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" Bonesaw shrieked. "It hurts!"
Why isn't she dead?
Aisha yanked the knife out and then gripped her taser.
"Is it Jack?" Burnscar asked, looking around, then turning to the window, "What the hell?"
"It's not Jack," Bonesaw said. She snapped her fingers, and the mechanical spider leaped on top of her, beginning to suture the wounds in her neck. "I gave Jack the same safeguards I gave us, he would have succeeded if he tried it."

Thanks God that Bonesaw didn't died Bonesaw didn't died because of her safeguards that protected her against stabbing (I was right about them). It looks like EVERYONE have safeguards so they can't be killed through normal means. More invincibility for S9 members, as it wasn't enough what they had already. I have to admit, Aisha, you have more cold blood than Taylor or your brother have. Taylor wouldn't be so willing to kill a child little murderous insane scientist, I just can't see her acting like this, at least in the present, and I half wanted you to be successful, but Bonesaw is not someone easy to take down, despite her cuteness little stature and APPARENTLY no ways to protect herself without her spiders or Frankies. Now RUN OUT FROM THAT APARTMENT BEFORE CHERISH WILL ACCIDENTALLY ENTER and will discover you.

Shatterbird scowled. "Then who or what was that? Crawler, do you know?"
Aisha backed toward the front door. She stopped as Crawler appeared in the doorway that led from the
kitchen to the front hall, looking through to see his teammates on the far end. His voice was a mangled mess
of sounds that only barely approximated anything like speech. "I don't smell anyone."
Smells can't find me, then, Aisha thought. Still, she didn't have her escape route.
"Torch the apartment and make a break for it?" Burnscar asked. "We can meet up as a group later."
"No. Cherish has a hard time tracking Mannequin, and he won't know how to find us," Shatterbird said.
"I'm okay," Bonesaw piped up. She held one hand to her eye socket, which had trails of smoke rising from it.
"You don't need to worry. I can put my throat back together easy, after I get my kit out to check the sheaths for my vitals to make sure there's no abrasions, and I've got spare eyes. I could go with green eyes. Or one green and one blue, or if I alter them, I could have-"
"Quiet," Shatterbird cut in. "It's less about you being hurt and more about the fact that someone had the audacity to attack us here. Burnscar, put out those fires. We don't want attention."
The wall of flame shrunk and faded away.
"Really hope you don't have another way of sensing me, big guy," Aisha said to Crawler, ducking between his legs and stepping towards the door. "I'm gonna make my exit now."
None of the Nine reacted as she shut the door behind her.
Lesson learned. The more 'vulnerable' members of the Nine weren't as vulnerable as they looked. Sheaths,
Bonesaw had said?
Stepping into the lobby, she stopped in her tracks.
One of the detectives who'd been standing by the door was dead, his throat slit. He laid in the center of the lobby. Two more blood trails ran to the side of the lobby opposite the stairs.
Manager's office?
Her weapon drawn, she reached for the doorknob, and collided with Jack as he strode out of the office.
"What's wrong?" Cherish asked.
Aisha backed away.
"Nothing," Jack said. "You grab the last body and then find a mop."

Btw, RIP Jonathan, I hope he died when Burnscar torched half of the apartment trying to target Aisha. That would be a quick merciful death for him. :( And....oh no, exactly what I was afraid the most. CHERISH (now I seriously feel the NEED to cuss "sighs") Gosh, Jack, don't let a girl do the heavy work. You should do it, you're the man. You're not very gentlemanly, you know this, right?

"Me?"
"I think I've been exceedingly generous, giving you a second chance. You can repay me by doing the heavy
lifting."
"Ever the gentleman."
"Go on, now. I'll wait here."
Aisha watched as Cherish walked past her, grabbed the heavyset detective and began dragging him inch by inch toward the office.
She only remembered one other time when her heart had pounded this hard. It had been when the fledgling Merchants had attacked her and her father. It was another chance. While they were separated, she could go after one. But which?
I think that Cherish KNOWS that Aisha is there but she doesn't tell anything to Jack because....is she planning to betray S9 again, by waiting until they'll be alone and trying to make a deal with Aisha?

She held the taser and the knife, adjusting her grip so she was secure.
Jack was the key figure. Aisha knew she could attack him, knew she maybeshould, but would she succeed any more than she did against Bonesaw? Cherish might be able to lash out with some kind of blind fire, affecting the emotions of everyone nearby.
No. Cherish was the newest member, wasn't she? There were better odds that Cherish didn't have the protections that Jack and the others did.
Exhaling slowly, Aisha followed behind Cherish as the girl tugged the body into the other room. She stepped inside and shut the door.
"Put the weapon away," Cherish said, her voice quiet.
Aisha gulped, realizing the trap she'd just stepped into. "You can hear me?"
A second passed, and there was no response.
"Put it away, or I'm going to leave you quivering in a corner, shitting your pants."
"You can't hear me." Aisha gripped her weapon and stepped closer.
Cherish whirled around, her eyes flitting right and left, searching for Aisha. "I'll scream. He'll come in here, and a couple swings of his knife, he can cut you down, invisible or no."
"It's not invisibility," Imp said, uselessly.
"Put your weapon away," Cherish said, her voice quiet and carefully measured, "We only have a few seconds before Jack gets suspicious. Listen. I want to strike a deal."
"smiles" I was right, Cherish wants to streak a deal with Aisha, getting ready for setting in motion S9 Betrayal Plan B. Gosh, Cherish, if this Plan B will work so "well" as the first plan, that won't be good for you. But most important, will she let Aisha walk away or will she take her hostage, as part of her plan, whatever it is?

But I'll find the answer where the right time will come. In this time, I hope I'll remember Imp's codename. What? WHAT? :p I'm tired, my head hurts, too much concentration to remember Imp (now I forgot her real name, great), good night and sleep well, my friends.
 
Snare 13.3
Hello, good and bad people. Last time, there was this oddest Interlude so far in this story. The first part of the Interlude was told from the PV of Brian's bitch of a mother, Celia, her boyfriend, Samwise Gamgee, and her friend, Jennifer. These people were terrorized by poltergeist phenomenon in their own house. Celia couldn't even find her drugs because of the damn annoying poltergeist. "Poor" Celia. The second part was told from Bonesaw's POV. She had some work to do, "saving" Jonathan's life with new and very "ethical" medical procedures, while her dog was sleeping and her two friends were reading books . But the evil poltergeist decided to mess with her life as well, by stabbing her several times. Luckily, she was injured but survived thanks to her brilliant mind :D "slaps herself" -I should not be so happy :(. Then the poltergeist started to bother Cherish who was doing what she usually likes to do in her spare time: carry around heavy bodies. The poltergeist stopped bothering her only when Cherish had to make a deal with it. Damn this poltergeist, screwing people's lives left and right without any care. And nobody was thinking to call Winchester Brothers in their help. Ok, but seriously speaking now, I've noticed 3 important things during the Interlude: Aisha's power is similar with Lisas in terms of being always turned on. With the difference that Aisha can still turn it off if she concentrates enough but is impossible for Lisa to do the same, to block all the information she receives all the time. Anyway, it would have been worse for Aisha if she couldn't turn off her power than for Lisa. Imagine Aisha having to live for her entire life completely isolated from society and alone, like a personal hell created by her power. Only people with emotion/mental powers to be able to notice her but without seeing or hearing her, only feeling her emotions or reading her mind. That would have been a really sucky life, the suckiest one. Another thing I noticed: Aisha's power seems to be...alive. Its like her power is another living being and its trying to control her not other way around. Yep, Aisha is the first parahuman I saw so far whose power acts like its alive and independent of her. Very odd and I have a bad feeling that one day her own power might "betray" her by getting completely from under the little control she have over it and turning against her. That would be such a HELLA WTF development of this story, beating everything else in its wackiness. And the third thing I noticed: Bonesaw won't be surprised if Jack will attack her. She said that if Jack would have attacked her he would have killed her. So she won't exclude an attack coming from Jack. Weird, because I believed that she trusted Jack, right after Siberian. Maybe they don't have such a nice relationship like they appear to have in front of their enemies. Maybe Bonesaw, deep down, is afraid of Jack and she's doing what she's doing for his team because he have means to force her. Or maybe I'm finding her too many excuses and she doesn't deserve not even half of them because even if she's a child, she's even more crazy than some of her teammates "sighs". Alright, let's continue with Snare 13.3


How the hell was that motherfucker that fast?
He wasn't even trying to avoid my bugs, so I had a sense of where he was as Grue, Bitch and I tore down the street on our dogs. I rode behind Grue on Sirius, my arms on his shoulders, while Bitch rode Bentley, Lucy's corpse lying across her lap.
We'd lost a couple of minutes as we helped Bitch retrieve Lucy's real body. It was eerie to see. When the dogs grew, they really appeared to be adding mass, literally growing and stretching. Somewhere in the transformation, after they weren't recognizable as the animals they had once been, their real bodies were reformed inside a placenta-like sac. Mannequin's gunshot had opened a hole in Lucy's chest and penetrated that membrane to kill the real dog within. We'd used my knife and Grue's raw strength to help pull the dog free in a grim sort of anti-childbirth.
It might be seen as a waste of precious time in a crucial moment, but I doubted we would have had Bitch in our corner otherwise, and without her, we wouldn't have a ride, so to speak.
I'd consoled myself with the fact that we had a pair of massive, muscular steeds that could outpace any car you'd see on the street, and Mannequin was limited to his two legs. The thing was, somewhere around the point where he stopped trying to evade my tripwires and my bugs and picked up speed, when he really started moving, I realized he was actually faster than the dogs.
Mannequin covered a lot of ground with his long legs and seemingly endless energy, and he didn't have any injuries. The dogs, Bitch and Grue did. Mannequin had been aiming at the animals more than he'd aimed at Grue or Bitch, so the damage to my teammates was more or less limited to a few flecks embedded in the legs, buttock and feet. The injuries were small, but one in Bitch's stomach worried me. There were way too many vitals that could be hit with that location, and it was bleeding worse than any of the others.
She wanted to press on, and I wasn't about to try and change her mind. I wouldn't be able to stop her, for one thing, and I did want to help my people.
Mannequin moved in a straight line, onto rooftops, down to the ground, or halfway down and through windows that had been stripped of glass, emerging from the far side. My bugs swarmed him where I could get them to, trying to snag him with lines and threads of silk and hamper his movements, but I could only get him with a small few at a time. He was approaching the edge of my effect's reach, and I knew I'd lose track of him shortly.
Once I did, I wasn't sure I'd catch him again. He could apparently see my bugs and since our last confrontation he'd gained the ability to see the spider silk I was placing on him or in his vicinity. It was remarkably high-resolution vision for someone who hadn't been able to notice that I didn't have a pool of blood spreading out beneath me during our last fight. Or was his inability to see that because he was calibrated to see the small things?

Ice-cream ready? Ready. Lights on? Lights on. Funny videos I'm watching at every 5 minutes to relax my mind? Ready. Gosh, I feel like I'm still not ready yet. I mean, I'm making a huge effort reading every Mannequin Chapter and maybe some people will see this as an easy feat because I review them apparent fast, but its not. Its not easy at all. I'm wasting HOURS to review a single Mannequin Chapter because of the so many breaks I'm taking everytime when I can't bear anymore either the constantly description of this asshole, his crimes or his simple presence. I can read an entire Chapter about Bonesaw making absolute horrible and disgusting experiments on people without moving a muscle on my face, or about Cauldron torturing their subjects or about Siberian eating people at breakfast, lunch and dinner without taking 5 seconds of break from reading BUT I can't tolerate Mannequin for more than 5 minutes without feeling the uncontrollable impulse to tell myself: enough, I need some break from this torture. Because this is torture, this is horror, this is one of the few things I hate reading about in this story. Mannequin. This story would have been so much better without this mental torture represented by this fucked up character, from MY point of view. I know that Mannequin is very interesting and even fascinating for other people, but for me, his simple presence is my own literature hell. I'm gonna like Worm more when he'll disappear. And throw a real party. Alright, Mannequin EVOLVED. He turned into something better than his last version, the one who got his ass kicked by the Hive Queen (that would have been a better codename than Skitter, I think :D). Soon, this bastard will become a FUCKING TRANSFORMER. Its like he's in an open competition with S9's pokemon, Crawler: the one who'll evolve the most will get a special and honorable prize -half of USA killed in his name.

It wouldn't matter if I couldn't find him or catch up to him.
"He's veering left!" I shouted to my teammates, "Faster, Sirius! He's getting away!"
I could feel a tremor in Sirius' body, like the momentary tremor of a twitching muscle, but in every muscle. My legs spread a fraction further apart as he grew larger, his ribs expanding further in either direction. The increase in his speed was small but noticeable.
I cast a glance over my shoulder at Bitch. Her mask had fallen off at some point when we'd been retrieving Lucy or during our ride. She looked drawn, the lines of her mouth and the bones of her face that much more prominent. Had I failed to notice she was like that before, was it pain from her injuries that did it, or was it anger?
Whatever it was, I suspected this use of her power was drawing on reserves she didn't have.
Mannequin disappeared into the penthouse floor of an apartment building, and I positioned bugs at the very periphery of my range to prepare lines of thread and to gather so they could land on him as he emerged.
Somehow, I couldn't say how, he emerged from a lower floor, mere seconds after he'd entered the building. He brushed past a small handful of insects, and then he was out of reach of my swarm.
"He's out of my range!" I shouted.
Nobody responded. I had to double-check that Bitch hadn't fallen from Bentley's back. She didn't look any better than she had a moment ago, and she looked out of breath. I expected the pain of her injuries was taking its toll. As for Grue, I couldn't really see anything but the back of his head and his shoulders while I clung to his waist. I didn't get the sense that he was about to pass out, either.
No use in responding when you couldn't spare the breath and everyone knew what the answers would be. We'd search for him at the last place we'd seen him. My territory.
Giant paws pounded on the wet pavement as we raced for our destination.
How the hell were we supposed to fight him? If we could even find him?

He'd have some countermeasure for my bugs and my cocoon strategy. There was no way he'd let himself get caught up in the same trap twice. Grue's power didn't affect him. Bitch's dogs did affect him, but they weren't bulletproof.
That was without factoring in any additional weapons he had.
One arm around Grue's waist, I drew my phone from my utility compartment and dialed Genesis from my contact list.
"Genesis here. What?"
"Mannequin en route to my territory for some kind of revenge against me for our last fight. How fast can you pull a body together?"
"Two minutes."
"He'll be there in five. Clear people out of the way, and put together a form that can take a beating and hamper him."
"On it."
Sierra was the first and only contact I'd entered into the phone beyond the ones Coil had put in prior to giving them to us. I contacted her next.
"Sierra here, boss."
"Clear people out of the area, and contact everyone you gave a phone to, telling them to hide and take cover. Mannequin's coming back to make trouble."
"Got it."

Yes, Genesis, give Hive's people a helping hand. You're a good girl and I like your power quite a lot. To fight from the distance using various powered projections is one of the coolest and strongest powers someone is blessed to have. I'd like to have this power. I'd use projections to give children in the hospitals a a great time, to hold shows for children in amusement parks, to save people and animals from accidents, fire, to catch lawbreakers for the police, or just to amuse people on streets. So many possibilities. ;) I noticed that Skitter made a strategical mistake. By not allowing herself to appear weak in front of her people, she made a mistake. She didn't evacuated her territory for as long as S9 were staying in the City. She could have told her people to leave her territory and go to shelters, or their friends/relatives' homes and remain there for a month. I'm sure that if she'd have told them that not even heroes can defeat S9 and they should stay away from her territory for almost a month, they'd have understand her and accept her proposal. In this time she'd have continued to supply them with food and medication, sending the stuff to their shelters/homes/anywhere they're hiding. Cherish have no idea how many people Skitter have and she doesn't know anything about their identities so she couldn't find them anyway. Then, after the whole S9 nightmare ended, the people could have returned back to their homes in Hive, all of them being alive and unharmed. By not wanting to be weak, Skitter stopped thinking strategically for the sake of her people and became a bit selfish. I'd rather prefer to be weak and admit my weakness in front of everyone than to put my people's lives in danger. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'll condemn her if Mannequin will kill some of the people. Its not her fault especially since she's doing the impossible to save as many people as possible. But.... she was still pretty selfish or had a bad strategy for choosing to keep people in Hive during this Survivor game with S9.

I hung up. With the jostling movement of the dog's running, I didn't trust my ability to put the phone away in the compartment, so I held it in one clenched fist.
During the six or seven minutes it took us to cross from Ballistic's territory to my own, my teeth were clenched so hard I thought I'd break something, my neck and shoulders so tense they felt more like stone than flesh.
I valued my ability to come up with answers, but my mind was empty. I wasn't sure how I'd deal, and the worst part of it was that it wasn't me that was necessarily going to pay the price.
As we entered my territory, I felt strangely composed for the anxieties that tore through me, a little detached from things.
My bugs swept through the territory, and I did my best to recall where tripwires had been set and figure out which had been broken. I checked on my people, using bugs to make sure they were standing and that they were somewhere safe.
Could I sweep through my territory using squadrons of flies with dragline silk stretched out between them, to the point that he couldn't slip past them? It would take time to set up.
No. There was no need. As I approached the heart of my territory, near my barracks, I found him, standing in the middle of the road.
"There!" I called out to my team. We changed direction and charged toward the street in question. We stopped when he came into our view.
Mannequin stood in the center of the road, his back to us. Half a dozen of my people were lying on the road, unconscious or dead. I couldn't see any blood. There were a couple more people in nearby buildings that had fallen as well. How had he reached them? Why hadn't Genesis and Sierra been able to get everyone out?
A quiet horror ran through me like ice water.
Genesis, too, was on the road, in the process of dissolving. She'd taken on the form of something like a stegosaurus crossed with a scorpion, all brawn and armor plating, with a long, prehensile, wickedly spiked tail. He'd beaten her.
Very little of the silk I'd laid on him was still intact. My bugs settled on him, and began to draw out more silk, binding him.

He turned our way, and his mouth opened like a ventriloquist dummy or a christmas nutcracker. It jiggled up and down, silently, mocking. Laughter without sound.
"Fucker!" Bitch screamed. Then she whistled, with a volume and pitch that could make crowds stop in their tracks. Bentley charged.
The bugs I had on Mannequin began to die.

....................................FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK................................HE HAVE A MOUTH AND HE'S LAUGHING NOW. Gooooooooooooooosh. I need to take a break....I need to take a break before LOSING MY FUCKING MINDS. Alright, back. He either drugged or gassed his victims, judging by the fact that Skitter's bugs are dying. But knowing this monster, he gassed them, he have no reason to use drugs. He's there for killing, for getting revenge on Skitter, for successfully finishing his second day of testing and for teaching Skitter a lesson about saving people. He's not there for making people addicted to drugs. So, they're dead. 6 people dead. No, Skitter, isn't your fault. Its HIS fault. Only HIS fault.

That took me a precious second to process. "Bitch! It's a trap!"
She turned to look over her shoulder, and Bentley took some cue from that, because he turned slightly. Maybe that helped, because she hauled him into a hard left turn, wheeling around.
Whatever it was that Mannequin was doing, it spread fast, knocking my bugs out of the air and reaching out past Bitch and Bentley before they realized the threat and started running away from him.
"Get back!" I shouted.
Bitch urged Bentley into a run. They made it four steps before Bentley collapsed.
Tumbling to the ground, Bitch landed and couldn't sustain her own weight with her injured leg. She landed flat on her stomach, and then began making retching sounds as she gasped for air and continued to crawl forward.
Mannequin's mouth continued jittering up and down, and he took a step closer to us, his hands upturned at his sides.
Gas. Colorless, scentless, swift to spread and it incapacitated in seconds. If my bugs were any indication, it also killed its victims shortly after.
I looked around, hoping and praying for some sort of outside assistance. Nothing.
It was down to me, Grue, Sirius and Bastard.
Bastard looked unnerved. His master and alpha were out of action. He took a step forward, then back. He was unnerved by Mannequin, and I suspected he could smell the gas.
"Bastard!" I said. He whipped his head around to look at me.
Here's hoping that Bitch trained him well.
"Get your master! Go! Fetch!" I pointed at Bitch.
Bastard turned, started forward, and then stopped.
"Go! Fetch, fetch!"
He bolted. Mannequin continued walking slowly towards us. He didn't move as Bastard approached and picked Bitch up by the back of her pants.
It would be so easy for him to simply shoot Bastard and slow him down long enough for the gas to take effect.
He didn't.
"Bastard, come! Come on!"

The puppy ran back to us. There was nothing we could do for Bentley.
I hopped down and grabbed Bitch as Bastard came back to us. He growled as I approached, but he didn't protest as I took Bitch into my arms and dragged her back toward Grue and Sirius.
Grue didn't dismount, but I doubted he would have managed well if he had, given his injured leg. I tried to ignore Mannequin's steady approach as I propped Bitch's limp form up against Sirius' side long enough to lift her arms up to Grue's waiting hands. Together, we hauled her up so she was lying astride Sirius' shoulders, just in front of Grue.

"Gas," I muttered. "There's a cloud of gas around him."
"Fuck me," Grue said. "I'd hoped we could at least hit him."

I was right about gas. He can eliminate gas from his entire body, killing everyone who enter in the contact with it. I don't like reading about people being gassed for some reasons....Anyway, Grue is injured, Bitch is injured, but was saved by Skitter and Bastard, the wolf puppy who, so far, is by Bitch's side, Lucy is dead, Genesis's projection was destroyed (Genesis should call Travelers in Undersiders' help because they're allies and they have to help each others. Both teams have interests in working together, I wonder what Mannequin would do if Sundancer will burn him to crisp. I don't think that Sundancer will hesitate to kill this fuckass. I mean, Noelle is her friend and these fuckers want to kidnap her, she should know that only brutal force mixed with a good strategy will stop them from taking her friend away from her. No negotiations neither inaction.)


I looked at Bastard. Too small to ride. He was the size of a pony, but he wasn't built for riding in the same way, and the spikes and bony plates that covered him were too densely packed for me to find any sort of flat patch to sit on. I reached for the chain that trailed from his muzzle.
He growled again, vicious.
I was taken aback for half a second. Then anger set in. I barked, "Enough!" and I snatched up the chain.
He growled again, and I hauled on it. The way it was rigged, it looped around his snout so it would tighten around the end of his nose when the chain was pulled. It was like a choke collar, but focused more on the sensitive snout than on the throat. He recoiled and tried to pull away, and I tugged again.
This time, he went still, resisting less.
"You're with me, puppy," I said, pulling on the chain as I backed away from Mannequin. "Grue, take Bitch and get to cover. I can't see inside your darkness so long as that gas is wiping out my bugs, and he isn't bothered by it, so remove it as fast as you apply it, but try to push the gas away or displace it or whatever."
"We need a plan to win this," he said.
"Priority one is surviving until we think of one," I replied. "Genesis will be back in action in a few minutes."
"A few minutes is a long time."
"I know," I looked at Mannequin again. He'd closed his mouth and was standing still. I pointed. "You go that way, I go this way. Keep an eye on the sky. If there's trouble, we signal each other."
He nodded once.
"Go!"
We split, and Mannequin broke off, chasing Grue.
I headed the opposite way.
Think, Taylor, think! Mannequin was a smart guy. Everything he did would be calculated to achieve some specific goal.
Why was he here? He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to hit me where it hurt, and he'd done it. He'd killed no less than ten of my followers. Charlotte and Sierra could easily be among them.
He had let us find him because he wanted to bait us into a trap. It had worked against Bitch, for the most part. She wasn't dead, I hoped, but she was out of action.
What about the small stuff? The little things? After he'd caught Bitch, he hadn't shot her, and he hadn't shot Bastard when the puppy was making its rescue attempt.
Why?

So, he killed 10 of her people, not 6. Told you that my math skills STINK. When I tell you something, believe me. ;) Its easy, Skitter, he wants to test you and Bitch in the same time. He made Amy to see Undersiders as people who can't protect her, at least temporary, he killed Bitch's dog to make her break and become a S9 member, he killed Skitter's people to punish Skitter for taking care of her people and break her even if she's not a candidate. He's playing psychologically games with everyone, he have a great fun wrecking everyone shit. He's the biggest asshole in S9. All others are crazy criminals, but Mannequin is a jerkass crazy criminal. He's doing evil for the sake of doing evil. He have a great fun doing as much evil as possible. He's more like a generic doomsday villain than anything else.

He could have been conserving ammunition. What was that term for 'the simplest answer is often the correct one'? It didn't matter. It was possible.
I moved my bugs closer to Mannequin, to test his presence for gas. Only a few perished. There wasn't much, if any. His mouth was closed. He was catching up to Grue. Grue must have noticed, because he directed Sirius up into an alley and towards a roof.
Mannequin stopped and raised one arm, then fired. My bugs felt the concussion of the shot, but no reaction from Grue and Sirius. There was a pause, then another shot. Again, no reaction. Two misses.
Okay. So Mannequin was shooting now, when he hadn't been before.
Were there other clues? What had changed after he'd closed his mouth?
He'd started running, for one thing.
So he hadn't been running, he hadn't been shooting… What had been holding him back? It could have been him trying to look intimidating, but he could have achieved the same ends by shooting Bastard and making me watch Bitch die. He could have been just as scary running towards us as fast as he'd sprinted from the ambush site to my territory.
The gas. If the gas was coming from his mouth, and he was being careful in how he moved, that meant there was something about the gas. I even had an idea about what it was.
Maybe he hadn't wanted to blow himself up.
He'd been invested in terraforming, once upon a time. Making inhospitable environments hospitable. Chances were he was loaded down with custom-made organisms that were primed to generate the gas he was using, maybe even storing it in a compressed form. Given his tinker abilities, they could be advanced enough to account for the sheer volume of the gas. It could even be how his guns operated: with compressed, combustible gas used to fire the shot.
There was no way to say for sure, but my gut told me I was right or I was pretty close to the mark. His actions, both the obvious and minor ones, make a complete, logical sense if I assumed he was spewing out massive volumes of flammable gas.
Oh, so he might be vulnerable to his own gas. Skitter can create a huge explosion by setting Mannequin is fire. He'll go fucking BOOM and maybe be torn in so many pieces than not even the best Tinkers of Cauldron would be able to put them together against if they'd want to restore him. Call your bugs with matches and lighters in their mandibles and FINISH THIS MONSTROSITY already.

Could I even take advantage of that? The amount of gas he seemed to be putting out would make for a devastating explosion. It could potentially hurt him, but I couldn't say if the shockwave or the blast itself would kill me or any nearby innocents. If there was enough gas, it could even damage or destroy nearby buildings. Some of the structures around here weren't exactly sound.
If nothing else, it gave me a clue about what to watch for. It also gave me a last-ditch weapon if things really went south. I ordered my bugs into the building I'd designated as my people's barracks and collected some small items with silk and clouds of bugs working in unison.
A spear of darkness soared towards the sky. When it lost momentum, it began billowing outward and drifting slightly with the wind. A signal.
"Come on, Bastard!" I ordered. I bolted for Brian's location. I crossed the street, glancing at the fallen
Bentley, and I headed toward an alley.
My bugs crossed paths with me, and the items made their way into my hands. A cheap plastic lighter and a packet of matches. I stashed the matches between my belt and my hip and slid the lighter into a small pocket in my utility compartment.
I really hoped I wouldn't have to use them.
Entering the alley, I swept through the area with my bugs, directing them to extend outward with lines of silk between them. They were gathered close enough to one another that Mannequin wouldn't be able to avoid them.
I found Mannequin and the black smudge of Grue's form at the opposite end of the alley. Sirius and Bitch were a distance away, both sprawled at the base of a building, covered in rubble. I wondered how this scenario had unfolded. How had Mannequin hit them that hard? Grue had reached the roof, the last I saw, and I'd missed what came next because I hadn't wanted to lose precious bugs from my swarm by getting them gassed.
Whatever had occurred, Mannequin had turned the tables and brought them back to the ground, hard.
Mannequin looked at me, and his mouth was open, engaged in that same shuddering up and down movement as before. I raised one hand to the fabric that covered my nose and mouth and backed away. Were Bitch and
Sirius close enough to be getting gassed too? I could feel bugs crawling on them. Both were breathing, though
Bitch's breaths were rapid and hoarse. My bugs were alive, as well, which meant they were safe where they were. A quick test with my bugs told me the cloud around Mannequin was small, with a radius of about four or five feet. There was no gas around me, either. The bugs on me weren't suffering, and they'd be the first to die or feel symptoms.
But Grue? Grue had surrounded himself in a thick cloud of darkness, to the point that I couldn't make out his arms and legs in the midst of it. From what I could gather, he was getting some benefit from it, and was pushing the gas away. How long could he sustain that, though? Was the darkness filtering it out, or was he holding his breath, slowly suffocating?
"Mannequin," I said, sounding a million times more calm than I felt. "You're going to back off and you're going to let him go."
He cocked his head to one side.
I raised the matchbook and, after checking again that my bugs were gas-free, lit it. A handful of my bugs carried it into the air.
"Or I light you up," I said.

Could I? I believed I could. Maybe it was fatigue speaking. Maybe it was the grim recognition of the fact that Mannequin had spoiled any hopes I'd had of winning Coil's respect and saving Dinah when he'd murdered the people in my territory. He'd singlehandedly destroyed my reputation and dealt a grave blow to the thing that had been driving me forward. Maybe a teeny-tiny part of it was hopelessness, knowing that I couldn't beat him otherwise.
So yeah, if he was going to snatch my hopes of saving Dinah from me, if Bitch and Grue were about to die anyways, I could turn the tables and blow us all up. I might not save Dinah, but I could save all the people
Mannequin would murder otherwise in the course of his career. No bluffing.
He stepped back, and I realized his foot had been on Grue's chest. I watched as Grue stood and then began limping toward me. Bastard growled and tugged on the chain I held.

STOP being so damn naive, Skitter, He didn't destroyed your reputation, you're not responsible for the dead of those 10 people, Coil will NEVER respect you not even if you'll help him control the entire american continent, not just a city, he'll NEVER give up at Dinah, and anyone who trust this snake of a man is painful naive or just plain stupid. You're not stupid, but you're naive and almost childish, Skitter. I know you're 15 years old, but you're very mature in so many other things, so I have some expectations from you. You trust people so much and have almost zero trust in yourself (kind of opposite to me). I bet that not even Vista would ever trust someone like Coil. Now stop thinking bullshit and BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER UNTIL NOTHING WILL REMAIN WHOLE FROM HIM!

I was in the process of reaching out for Grue to help steady him when I saw Mannequin move. He closed his mouth, raised one hand, and I could see a hole appear in the base of his palm. The barrel of a gun.
"No!" the word was as much a grunt as anything else as it came from my throat, too choked for me to say anything normal. I grabbed for Grue as I'd planned and I shoved him to the ground.
In a movie, that might have been the heroic sequence that occurred in slow motion, where the lunatic villain missed the pivotal shot by a hair and blew himself up in the process. We'd be left bloody but victorious.
But Mannequin didn't fire. He was too collected to do any of that.
He adjusted his aim, directing his hand-gun to where I'd pushed Grue to the ground.
"No!" I said, and the sound wasn't a grunt this time. I stepped in the way, putting myself between Mannequin and Grue, arms spread, half-kneeling. Bastard tugged on the leash again as he stepped forward, and I almost fell on my face. I could let him go and sic him on Mannequin, but he'd almost certainly die like Lucy had.
"Bastard, back," I said, tugging him to one side. I wasn't about to let a dog take a bullet for me.
Besides, a part of me suspected that Mannequin was going to let me live so he could make me watch while he killed my friends and followers.
I stared at his blank, featureless face, praying my instincts were telling me the truth.
Then he shrugged, and my heart fell.
Three things happened all at once. The first and most painfully obvious was that I got shot full in the chest.
The second was that I realized Grue was using his power to shroud us in darkness. He'd probably started the second Mannequin shrugged.
The third was the explosion.
Long, disorienting seconds passed in the aftermath. The pain hit me like a summer rain. There was a second of nothing at all, I realized it was starting, and then I was treated to buckets of it. I writhed, my ribs screaming in agony, trying to find some position where the pain would be less and failing. I felt like a hot poker was being shoved into the spot on my ribs where I'd taken the hit the previous night.
"Hey, hey," Grue said, "You're okay. You're in one piece."
I shook my head, unable to catch my breath. Each time I inhaled, it seemed to double the pain.
"You gotta stand, T- Skitter. Stand up."
More through Grue's efforts than my own, I was helped to my feet. Every movement exacerbated the pain in my chest.
I gingerly touched the site of the gunshot. Flecks of what looked like glass fell as I ran my hand over the cloth. Still couldn't breathe. The explosion had ignited every piece of rubbish at this end of the road that stood taller than the inch-high water level. Grue and I weren't, thankfully, blazing. My hair hadn't been ignited either, and perhaps most importantly, we hadn't been pulverized by the shockwave. It hadn't been a huge explosion, but it had been substantial enough.
I looked for our opponent, and I saw Mannequin virtually unscathed, lying in the shallow water. The blast had knocked him sprawling, but he'd disconnected his parts so only lengths of chain attached each.
An application, perhaps, of that martial arts principle. How did it go? An oak is broken by the hurricane's winds, but the supple willow only bends? He was already pulling himself together. There was barely a mark on him.

"Run," Grue said.
I was about to voice an agreement when I saw Bastard lurch to his feet. The chain leading to his muzzle wasn't in my hand.
Bastard pounced on Mannequin, taking one of the villain's arms in his jaws. Clenching, he began whipping
Mannequin around like a rag doll. Twice, Mannequin's lower body was bludgeoned against the nearby wall.
Yeah, didn't expect us to be that tough, did you?

Skitter took a bulled and felt the effects of the explosion to save Grue's black ass. :D As usual, Skitter going through hell for her teammates. That's the reason why Grue isn't so injured like Skitter or Tattletale. Because one of these two girls always have to suffer for him so he'll be fine. Grue, you're such a damsel in distress, everyone fighting their hardest to protect you. I said that I usually like when boys protect girls but in this story things are completely different. Girls are the ones protecting/saving the boys. FUCK YEAH, GIRL POWER, guys. :D Alright, so princess Grue and his knight in dark and grey armor, Skitter, are running from Mannequin while Mannequin is getting mauled by Bastard. If only he knows that Bastard is Siberian's gift for Bitch....

Mannequin turned the tables in a second. Between one of Bastard's shakes and the next, the villain stopped flopping around. I realized he'd ejected the knives from his toes and staked them in Bastard's neck and snout for leverage. His one free hand dangled at his side.
Moving was agony, but I was lurching towards them in a half-run before I fully realized why. Mannequin raised his free hand and pointed it at Bastard's left eye.
I caught his arm and hauled it back in the same moment he fired. Bastard repaid my kindness by whipping Mannequin to one side, striking me. Both Mannequin and I fell sprawling to the ground.
No sooner had I fallen than Grue was there to help me up. He was slower than I was with that granular buckshot in his leg, so he'd only just caught up.
Mannequin on the ground, Bastard off to one side, largely untrained with no master and nobody holding his chain, Grue and I both helping one another stand.
That vibrating mouth of Mannequin's was going again, puffing gas into the air, maybe to buy himself some breathing room from the dog.
"Bastard, stay," I said. What commands had I heard Bitch give her dogs? "Off!"
Couldn't say whether Bastard obeyed or if he just didn't want to attack anyways.
I had to check twice to see that there wasn't anything burning in Mannequin's immediate vicinity. No stray garbage to ignite the gas, sadly enough.
I looked behind me, and saw that the flames were raging. Even the water's surface was on fire. How? Had there been some chemical nearby, or something in the gas that transferred to the water's surface? Our avenue of retreat was shrinking.
Whatever. I reached behind my back and retrieved two items. The change purse was the first. I popped it open. A variety of quarters, dimes and nickels, all kept in place with wadded tissue, and a few small paper packets of smelling salts.
It was stupid to be carrying change around, really, but I'd wanted to have some on hand since it had crossed my mind during my first night out in costume.
I grabbed a tissue and tore it, once, then twice, until I had a series of strips. Then I ignited them with the lighter, the item I'd grabbed with my other hand. Dragonflies gripped the burning tissues in the instant I let them fall from my fingers.
Mannequin shut his mouth, stepping back. Half of the tissues went out or were dropped by the burned dragonflies before they got close enough. Which meant that the other half made it.
The gas ignited for a second time, but I didn't get to see it. Grue shielded us with his darkness once more. Whether it was to dampen the shockwave or keep us from being blinded by the light or something else, I didn't know. I could only trust that it worked. The darkness dissipated, we were standing, Mannequin wasn't.
A whistle from Bitch's direction and a signal that was too brief for me to catch sent Bastard forward. With Bitch's condition, I couldn't imagine how she handled it, but she managed to pump Bastard up. He grew to half-again the size he'd been, roughly as large as a small car, and when he bit down on Mannequin's arm this time, he broke the material. He adjusted his grip until he had Mannequin's lower body and legs in a hold, but the material there proved sturdier.
Two arms in two fights, I thought, with a grim satisfaction. The flames at our back were getting a touch too close for comfort, so I stepped forward, supporting Grue. His arm around my shoulder, we approached as close as we dared to Bastard's mayhem.

Sirius was hauling himself out of the rubble, with Bitch in the arch that formed with his front legs, chest, and the ground. She stood, shaky, still breathing funny, making rhythmic facial motions like she was swallowing convulsively or gagging.
Grue limped over to Bitch's side. She couldn't stand without Sirius's support, but Sirius was shoring up the rubble with his body. Grue gave her the support she needed and the pair of them made their way towards us. Sirius stepped away from the wall and the rubble he'd been holding up tumbled to the ground, and he returned to his master's side.
"Bastard," Grue said. "Monster. Freak."
Grue took Bitch's hand and placed it on my shoulder. She didn't pull away. Once he was sure we were both standing, he stepped away. Bending down with an excruciating slowness, Grue picked up a piece of rubble that had to have weighed fifty or sixty pounds, roughly cone-shaped.
Bitch seemed to follow his line of thinking. "Sirius, hold!"
The dog lurched forward and placed both front paws on Mannequin's body, pinning his arm and chest. Bastard growled at the one who was intruding on his quarry, and Sirius growled back.
Bastard quieted. It seemed he didn't fully realize that he was bigger, more dangerous and less injured. He was too used to being the puppy, with Sirius as the full-grown one.

Grue limped around the scene until he stood over Mannequin's body.
"Ignore the head," I said, quiet. "Nothing important in there. I'm not joking. It's a decoy. Get him in the chest."
Grue nodded and hefted the chunk of rubble until it was over his head, point facing forward.

Would it puncture? Hard to say.
Worth a try.
"Do it," Bitch growled, beside me. "Killed Lucy."

THEY KICKED MANNEQUIN'S SHELL ASS AGAIN. THEY FUCKING KICKED HIS ASS AGAIN. Wow, Mannequin, aren't you tired having your ass kicked all the fucking time? I mean, come on, so far you seem like the weakest S9 member even if we both know that you're not so weak. But you suck at battle strategies. Suck so fucking bad. Which is EXCELLENT. For me and everyone who hate you with ALL THE HATE IN THE WORLD :D. As for you Grue, fucking kill him, why are you hesitating? He DESERVES to die, you can't hesitate to kill a monster as evil as an Endbringer. He's not even human anymore, he's a monster, a thing who should stop existing. Gosh, Mannequin, Coil, Heartbreaker, Siberian, Crawler, Jack (well, you're handsome and overall a cool villain, but you still deserve to be killed, Jack ;)) are the villains that I won't have any hesitation and regret afterwards if I have to kill them. Because they're evil and dangerous villains and can't be stopped otherwise. They're not even redeemable.....And what about these random flames appearing across water? This is not Mannequin's play....fuck, don't tell me. Don't tell me that INSANE FIRE BITCH is going to help Mannequin. This is CHEATING. If Burnscar will make her appearance to help Mannequin, she's a fucking CHEATER because Jack's contract said that S9 should not help each others during each one's test.

"Bentley too, maybe," I said, quiet. "I'm sorry. I don't know if he made it. There was no way to save him."
"Do it," she repeated herself.
Grue didn't get a chance. An eruption of fire tore through our surroundings. Not an explosion. There was no shockwave, and barely any noise. It was more like a push, intensely hot and brief. We were knocked sprawling, dog and human alike. The agony in my ribs hit me worse than ever as I was knocked flat onto my back in the water and a huff of air was struck from my lungs.
"No," Grue said. "You can't interfere!"
The Protectorate?
It would be disastrous if the Protectorate-
No. I fixed my eyes on the scene. Much worse than the Protectorate.
Burnscar tapped her finger to one side of her nose. "I won't tell if you don't."
"You can't assist him. They're your rules."
"Jack's rules, not mine. But fine," Burnscar said. Something about the tone in her voice: it sounded casual, but there was something in it that reminded me of Shadow Stalker and Sophia. It wasn't angry like Shadow Stalker was, but it had the same emptiness. I just hadn't really picked up on it in the past.
Burnscar gave Mannequin a hand in getting to his feet. Cracks marred his lower body, and his left arm was a mess of cracked ceramic and pale gray organic pulp. I heard her murmur something.
Mannequin shook his head. Burnscar said something else.
He raised one hand, and Burnscar slapped it in a lazy high-five.
She turned towards us. "There. He just tagged me in. Forfeited his turn."
She cracked her knuckles, and every flaming piece of debris on the street became a pillar of fire, stretching vertically for the sky. The fire snaked over the surface of the water to cut off our avenues of retreat.

"My go. I'm taking round two."

Exactly what I was afraid of. The INSANE FIRE BITCH SHOWING HER FACE (now I feel bad because I felt pity for her during her Interlude. She's just an insane, heartless and CHEATING bitch who played perfectly the victim card in front of Labyrinth, lying that she feels any regret for her victims. She doesn't feel regrets otherwise she's have stopped helping S9 and changed the sides, helping UT against S9. In this way, she wouldn't be in danger to be killed by her teammates if she decided to suddenly stop killing. But she doesn't want to change. She LIKES her lifestyle, she likes to make people's lives miserable and especially to cheat. Labyrinth was right: there's no hope for this girl). SHE JUST SAVED MANNEQUIN, EXTENDING MY NIGHTMARE. FUCK HER, NOW SHE BECAME MY SECOND MOST HATED S9 MEMBERS. And when you think that I used to pity her.
Ok, time for Skitter & com to kick the second ass during that day. And even if they'll lose to her, Mannequin already lost both his testes because this bullshit between Burnscar and Mannequin will not count in Jack's eyes. HIS rules, after all. And two of his people already broke his rules. ;)

Good night and sleep well, my friends.
 
He's more like a generic doomsday villain than anything else.
While I definitely agree he's evil, complex in many ways, and creepy as fuck, I wouldn't call him "generic." Wildbow put a lot of thought into his character: Mannequin failed at saving people, so he's basically punishing anyone who succeeds where he failed. I wouldn't call him a generic doomsday villain, but rather a petty, miserable and above all: broken caricature of his former self.

Enjoyed this one a lot. Your reactions are very expressive and provide a lot of insight into your thoughts.
 
Hello, good and bad people. Last time, there was this oddest Interlude so far in this story. The first part of the Interlude was told from the PV of Brian's bitch of a mother, Celia, her boyfriend, Samwise Gamgee, and her friend, Jennifer. These people were terrorized by poltergeist phenomenon in their own house. Celia couldn't even find her drugs because of the damn annoying poltergeist. "Poor" Celia. The second part was told from Bonesaw's POV. She had some work to do, "saving" Jonathan's life with new and very "ethical" medical procedures, while her dog was sleeping and her two friends were reading books . But the evil poltergeist decided to mess with her life as well, by stabbing her several times. Luckily, she was injured but survived thanks to her brilliant mind :D "slaps herself" -I should not be so happy :(. Then the poltergeist started to bother Cherish who was doing what she usually likes to do in her spare time: carry around heavy bodies. The poltergeist stopped bothering her only when Cherish had to make a deal with it. Damn this poltergeist, screwing people's lives left and right without any care. And nobody was thinking to call Winchester Brothers in their help. Ok, but seriously speaking now, I've noticed 3 important things during the Interlude: Aisha's power is similar with Lisas in terms of being always turned on. With the difference that Aisha can still turn it off if she concentrates enough but is impossible for Lisa to do the same, to block all the information she receives all the time. Anyway, it would have been worse for Aisha if she couldn't turn off her power than for Lisa. Imagine Aisha having to live for her entire life completely isolated from society and alone, like a personal hell created by her power. Only people with emotion/mental powers to be able to notice her but without seeing or hearing her, only feeling her emotions or reading her mind. That would have been a really sucky life, the suckiest one. Another thing I noticed: Aisha's power seems to be...alive. Its like her power is another living being and its trying to control her not other way around. Yep, Aisha is the first parahuman I saw so far whose power acts like its alive and independent of her. Very odd and I have a bad feeling that one day her own power might "betray" her by getting completely from under the little control she have over it and turning against her. That would be such a HELLA WTF development of this story, beating everything else in its wackiness. And the third thing I noticed: Bonesaw won't be surprised if Jack will attack her. She said that if Jack would have attacked her he would have killed her. So she won't exclude an attack coming from Jack. Weird, because I believed that she trusted Jack, right after Siberian. Maybe they don't have such a nice relationship like they appear to have in front of their enemies. Maybe Bonesaw, deep down, is afraid of Jack and she's doing what she's doing for his team because he have means to force her. Or maybe I'm finding her too many excuses and she doesn't deserve not even half of them because even if she's a child, she's even more crazy than some of her teammates "sighs". Alright, let's continue with Snare 13.3



Ice-cream ready? Ready. Lights on? Lights on. Funny videos I'm watching at every 5 minutes to relax my mind? Ready. Gosh, I feel like I'm still not ready yet. I mean, I'm making a huge effort reading every Mannequin Chapter and maybe some people will see this as an easy feat because I review them apparent fast, but its not. Its not easy at all. I'm wasting HOURS to review a single Mannequin Chapter because of the so many breaks I'm taking everytime when I can't bear anymore either the constantly description of this asshole, his crimes or his simple presence. I can read an entire Chapter about Bonesaw making absolute horrible and disgusting experiments on people without moving a muscle on my face, or about Cauldron torturing their subjects or about Siberian eating people at breakfast, lunch and dinner without taking 5 seconds of break from reading BUT I can't tolerate Mannequin for more than 5 minutes without feeling the uncontrollable impulse to tell myself: enough, I need some break from this torture. Because this is torture, this is horror, this is one of the few things I hate reading about in this story. Mannequin. This story would have been so much better without this mental torture represented by this fucked up character, from MY point of view. I know that Mannequin is very interesting and even fascinating for other people, but for me, his simple presence is my own literature hell. I'm gonna like Worm more when he'll disappear. And throw a real party. Alright, Mannequin EVOLVED. He turned into something better than his last version, the one who got his ass kicked by the Hive Queen (that would have been a better codename than Skitter, I think :D). Soon, this bastard will become a FUCKING TRANSFORMER. Its like he's in an open competition with S9's pokemon, Crawler: the one who'll evolve the most will get a special and honorable prize -half of USA killed in his name.


Yes, Genesis, give Hive's people a helping hand. You're a good girl and I like your power quite a lot. To fight from the distance using various powered projections is one of the coolest and strongest powers someone is blessed to have. I'd like to have this power. I'd use projections to give children in the hospitals a a great time, to hold shows for children in amusement parks, to save people and animals from accidents, fire, to catch lawbreakers for the police, or just to amuse people on streets. So many possibilities. ;) I noticed that Skitter made a strategical mistake. By not allowing herself to appear weak in front of her people, she made a mistake. She didn't evacuated her territory for as long as S9 were staying in the City. She could have told her people to leave her territory and go to shelters, or their friends/relatives' homes and remain there for a month. I'm sure that if she'd have told them that not even heroes can defeat S9 and they should stay away from her territory for almost a month, they'd have understand her and accept her proposal. In this time she'd have continued to supply them with food and medication, sending the stuff to their shelters/homes/anywhere they're hiding. Cherish have no idea how many people Skitter have and she doesn't know anything about their identities so she couldn't find them anyway. Then, after the whole S9 nightmare ended, the people could have returned back to their homes in Hive, all of them being alive and unharmed. By not wanting to be weak, Skitter stopped thinking strategically for the sake of her people and became a bit selfish. I'd rather prefer to be weak and admit my weakness in front of everyone than to put my people's lives in danger. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'll condemn her if Mannequin will kill some of the people. Its not her fault especially since she's doing the impossible to save as many people as possible. But.... she was still pretty selfish or had a bad strategy for choosing to keep people in Hive during this Survivor game with S9.


....................................FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK................................HE HAVE A MOUTH AND HE'S LAUGHING NOW. Gooooooooooooooosh. I need to take a break....I need to take a break before LOSING MY FUCKING MINDS. Alright, back. He either drugged or gassed his victims, judging by the fact that Skitter's bugs are dying. But knowing this monster, he gassed them, he have no reason to use drugs. He's there for killing, for getting revenge on Skitter, for successfully finishing his second day of testing and for teaching Skitter a lesson about saving people. He's not there for making people addicted to drugs. So, they're dead. 6 people dead. No, Skitter, isn't your fault. Its HIS fault. Only HIS fault.


I was right about gas. He can eliminate gas from his entire body, killing everyone who enter in the contact with it. I don't like reading about people being gassed for some reasons....Anyway, Grue is injured, Bitch is injured, but was saved by Skitter and Bastard, the wolf puppy who, so far, is by Bitch's side, Lucy is dead, Genesis's projection was destroyed (Genesis should call Travelers in Undersiders' help because they're allies and they have to help each others. Both teams have interests in working together, I wonder what Mannequin would do if Sundancer will burn him to crisp. I don't think that Sundancer will hesitate to kill this fuckass. I mean, Noelle is her friend and these fuckers want to kidnap her, she should know that only brutal force mixed with a good strategy will stop them from taking her friend away from her. No negotiations neither inaction.)



So, he killed 10 of her people, not 6. Told you that my math skills STINK. When I tell you something, believe me. ;) Its easy, Skitter, he wants to test you and Bitch in the same time. He made Amy to see Undersiders as people who can't protect her, at least temporary, he killed Bitch's dog to make her break and become a S9 member, he killed Skitter's people to punish Skitter for taking care of her people and break her even if she's not a candidate. He's playing psychologically games with everyone, he have a great fun wrecking everyone shit. He's the biggest asshole in S9. All others are crazy criminals, but Mannequin is a jerkass crazy criminal. He's doing evil for the sake of doing evil. He have a great fun doing as much evil as possible. He's more like a generic doomsday villain than anything else.


Oh, so he might be vulnerable to his own gas. Skitter can create a huge explosion by setting Mannequin is fire. He'll go fucking BOOM and maybe be torn in so many pieces than not even the best Tinkers of Cauldron would be able to put them together against if they'd want to restore him. Call your bugs with matches and lighters in their mandibles and FINISH THIS MONSTROSITY already.


STOP being so damn naive, Skitter, He didn't destroyed your reputation, you're not responsible for the dead of those 10 people, Coil will NEVER respect you not even if you'll help him control the entire american continent, not just a city, he'll NEVER give up at Dinah, and anyone who trust this snake of a man is painful naive or just plain stupid. You're not stupid, but you're naive and almost childish, Skitter. I know you're 15 years old, but you're very mature in so many other things, so I have some expectations from you. You trust people so much and have almost zero trust in yourself (kind of opposite to me). I bet that not even Vista would ever trust someone like Coil. Now stop thinking bullshit and BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER UNTIL NOTHING WILL REMAIN WHOLE FROM HIM!


Skitter took a bulled and felt the effects of the explosion to save Grue's black ass. :D As usual, Skitter going through hell for her teammates. That's the reason why Grue isn't so injured like Skitter or Tattletale. Because one of these two girls always have to suffer for him so he'll be fine. Grue, you're such a damsel in distress, everyone fighting their hardest to protect you. I said that I usually like when boys protect girls but in this story things are completely different. Girls are the ones protecting/saving the boys. FUCK YEAH, GIRL POWER, guys. :D Alright, so princess Grue and his knight in dark and grey armor, Skitter, are running from Mannequin while Mannequin is getting mauled by Bastard. If only he knows that Bastard is Siberian's gift for Bitch....


THEY KICKED MANNEQUIN'S SHELL ASS AGAIN. THEY FUCKING KICKED HIS ASS AGAIN. Wow, Mannequin, aren't you tired having your ass kicked all the fucking time? I mean, come on, so far you seem like the weakest S9 member even if we both know that you're not so weak. But you suck at battle strategies. Suck so fucking bad. Which is EXCELLENT. For me and everyone who hate you with ALL THE HATE IN THE WORLD :D. As for you Grue, fucking kill him, why are you hesitating? He DESERVES to die, you can't hesitate to kill a monster as evil as an Endbringer. He's not even human anymore, he's a monster, a thing who should stop existing. Gosh, Mannequin, Coil, Heartbreaker, Siberian, Crawler, Jack (well, you're handsome and overall a cool villain, but you still deserve to be killed, Jack ;)) are the villains that I won't have any hesitation and regret afterwards if I have to kill them. Because they're evil and dangerous villains and can't be stopped otherwise. They're not even redeemable.....And what about these random flames appearing across water? This is not Mannequin's play....fuck, don't tell me. Don't tell me that INSANE FIRE BITCH is going to help Mannequin. This is CHEATING. If Burnscar will make her appearance to help Mannequin, she's a fucking CHEATER because Jack's contract said that S9 should not help each others during each one's test.


Exactly what I was afraid of. The INSANE FIRE BITCH SHOWING HER FACE (now I feel bad because I felt pity for her during her Interlude. She's just an insane, heartless and CHEATING bitch who played perfectly the victim card in front of Labyrinth, lying that she feels any regret for her victims. She doesn't feel regrets otherwise she's have stopped helping S9 and changed the sides, helping UT against S9. In this way, she wouldn't be in danger to be killed by her teammates if she decided to suddenly stop killing. But she doesn't want to change. She LIKES her lifestyle, she likes to make people's lives miserable and especially to cheat. Labyrinth was right: there's no hope for this girl). SHE JUST SAVED MANNEQUIN, EXTENDING MY NIGHTMARE. FUCK HER, NOW SHE BECAME MY SECOND MOST HATED S9 MEMBERS. And when you think that I used to pity her.
Ok, time for Skitter & com to kick the second ass during that day. And even if they'll lose to her, Mannequin already lost both his testes because this bullshit between Burnscar and Mannequin will not count in Jack's eyes. HIS rules, after all. And two of his people already broke his rules. ;)

Good night and sleep well, my friends.
It is very easy to blame someone when you have not experienced what that person has felt.
Also, technically, burnscar did not cheat, mannequin resigned, and failed, his round.
If the undersiders had broken the rules to, for example, save Lisa, you would be encouraging them.
I know I repeat a lot about your favoritism, but I am too impartial to not play as the devil's lawyer.
And Burnscar does not like what she does, but I'm not going to discuss the complexities of the human mind right now.
Also, they made a high five, what good companions.;)
 
It is very easy to blame someone when you have not experienced what that person has felt.
Also, technically, burnscar did not cheat, mannequin resigned, and failed, his round.
If the undersiders had broken the rules to, for example, save Lisa, you would be encouraging them.
I know I repeat a lot about your favoritism, but I am too impartial to not play as the devil's lawyer.
And Burnscar does not like what she does, but I'm not going to discuss the complexities of the human mind right now.
Also, they made a high five, what good companions.;)

Of course I'll encourage Undersiders, they're NOT murderous beasts who kill countless of innocent and defenseless people in cold blood. And I hate Mannequin and Burnscar, because they're completely heartless monsters who kill innocent people without blinking. Why should I feel sorry for Burnscar? Because she's insane? Because she lied Elle that she feels sorry for killing? That she ever feels remorse for her victims? No, she doesn't have any remorse for the countless of people she killed and she'll continue to kill. If she felt remorse, she'd have stopped, for God sake. She'd have helped Undersiders/Travelers to fight against S9, defeat them then she'd have surrender and go to Birdcage. Or in an asylum to be kept on medication for her entire life. Or kill herself. She have choices, but if she CHOOSE to continue to help S9, then she clearly LIKES what she's doing. I hold no pity or compassion for monsters, sorry, my friend, but you'll not convince me to stop judging them because I'll always judge them. Monsters should be treated like monsters. Not try to understand them, this is the priest's or therapist's bussiness. And I'm not priest neither therapist. I'm someone who know that monsters who doesn't want to redeem themselves can be stopped only through their complete eradication.
And yes, I'm by Undersiders' side in the same manner you're by S9's side. ;)
Burnscar CHEATED. She directly saved Mannequin's life and helps him, despite Jack saying in his contract that S9 members should not help each other. She's a cheater and a liar.
 
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While I definitely agree he's evil, complex in many ways, and creepy as fuck, I wouldn't call him "generic." Wildbow put a lot of thought into his character: Mannequin failed at saving people, so he's basically punishing anyone who succeeds where he failed. I wouldn't call him a generic doomsday villain, but rather a petty, miserable and above all: broken caricature of his former self.

Enjoyed this one a lot. Your reactions are very expressive and provide a lot of insight into your thoughts.

Gosh, man, you're RIGHT. I have a honest confession to make: Mannequin is starting to terrorize my dreams. Last night I dreamed that my mother was visiting me and I served her with home made cookies. Then, while she was eating my cookies, her skin and flesh started to fall, her muscles and bones followed right after, everything that she was losing being replaced by pieces of hard shell. Then, after she turned into some kind of female Mannequin, she started to laugh like a madwoman, turning her head 180 degrees and telling me all this fucking time that: I got you, honey! I woke up sweating and crying :(. Very few fictional characters scared me as much as Mannequin. I read and watch IT both old and new movie and Pennywise doesn't scare me not even half as Mannequin is doing. I know that people are scared by clowns, but I swear to you, my friend, Pennywise is nothing compared with Mannequin for me. I want Mannequin to die so much not only because he's a villain and he killed a lot of people (I'm sure that Siberian, Shatterbird and Jack killed more people than him) but also because he mentally terrorize me. I'd feel like its my birthday+ Christmas+ the birthday of my family all together when Mannequin will finally die. I'd feel so fucking happy, I'd be like: OMG, OMG, HE FINALLY DIED. THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST GIFTS I CAN POSSIBLE ASK FOR. Thank you for understanding me. :)
 
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