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

blackarrow · Jul 11, 2018

fabledFreeboota said:
Crawler acid is horrible. The S9 Merchant party interlude mentions it paralyses on top of melts, and I'm pretty sure its not nice enough to numb people on top of that.

EVERYTHING is HORRIBLE about Crawler. Even his codename. I think his trigger event was also most horrible than other trigger events. Crawler's real name must be mister Horrible PainInYourAss.

fabledFreeboota · Jul 11, 2018

blackarrow said:
EVERYTHING is HORRIBLE about Crawler. Even his codename. I think his trigger event was also most horrible than other trigger events. Crawler's real name must be mister Horrible PainInYourAss.

I've seen a lot of really horrible theories for how he triggered and honestly I don't want to know what kind of trauma is symbolic of recovering from abuse over and over again.

rafuki22 · Jul 11, 2018

blackarrow said:
I'm exactly your opposite. I'm very extrovert, laid back, I love to express my feelings anytime, to tell people what I think about them, even if my brutal honesty bothers them (then I feel bad for bothering them but I can't really help myself), I like to have as much fun as possible and to socialize with people. But when I'm getting pissed/angry myself, even my close-knit friends are very careful to not bother me even more. I'm a girl of extreme emotions. I'm like the most serene lake under the moonlight but I can be also like the scariest tsunami. And I have no idea what apathy means in my case. I'm never apathetic or bored.

You have never been bored? Let me doubt it.
You also do not need to be an extrovert to be honestly brutal.
Finally, you wrote Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein, when you should have written the Frankenstein monster, the way you've written it makes it look like there are two Dr. Frankenstein.

AmbarGriss · Jul 11, 2018

fabledFreeboota said:
I've seen a lot of really horrible theories for how he triggered and honestly I don't want to know what kind of trauma is symbolic of recovering from abuse over and over again.

Tell me some Plz? You can PM me if you want.

fabledFreeboota · Jul 12, 2018

AmbarGriss said:
Tell me some Plz? You can PM me if you want.

I really don't want to dive into any of them because they disgusted or horrified me, but most of the ones I saw were stuff like parental abuse or masochism related injuries.

blackarrow · Jul 12, 2018

fabledFreeboota said:
I've seen a lot of really horrible theories for how he triggered and honestly I don't want to know what kind of trauma is symbolic of recovering from abuse over and over again.

So, there are only fan theories? No Crawler's backstory? I'm disappointed because I wanted Crawler's backstory.

Anyway, I have my own theory. I think Crawler was abused before triggering, possible being tortured over and over again until his mind broke, then he got high pain tolerance, a forced tolerance who helped him to cope with his constant abuse. Then he triggered and became powerful enough to kill his abuser(s) and become a free man. But, as side effects of his power/insanity, he also became obsessed to be injured by anything. He started to like pain instead of hating it because he was already used with pain before triggering. And his trigger amplified his unwillingly acceptance of pain and twisted it into something extremely masochist. I feel bad for whatever happened to him in the past, but in the present he's nothing but a monster who deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth as soon as possible.

blackarrow · Jul 12, 2018

rafuki22 said:
You have never been bored? Let me doubt it.
You also do not need to be an extrovert to be honestly brutal.
Finally, you wrote Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein, when you should have written the Frankenstein monster, the way you've written it makes it look like there are two Dr. Frankenstein.

I get bored only when people around me talk about very boring subjects to me: business, economics, scientific stuff that I can't understand, and philosophy that doesn't seem very interesting to me (something like how Shatterbird talked). Or if I read about this stuff. This is the only way I can get bored.

blackarrow · Jul 12, 2018

Hello, my darlings. Last Chapter, a lot of things happened. Good and bad. Weld fighting with Crawler and Mannequin to keep them away from his teammates, Skitter helping him from the sky, fighting a guerilla war while flying with her pet pokemon, and finally Glory Girl and Cache being severely injured by Crawler's acid. Glory Girl's mere existence seems to piss off quite a lot her own God, this is the only explanation I can find for her being exposed to such fucked up situations, even worse than anything Skitter endured so far as an Undersider. The only character whose suffering was pretty similar with Glory Girl is Grue, being flayed alive, having all your nerves turned into artificial webs and your organs exposed outside your body -all while feeling the entire resulted pain- is as bad as being melted by acid and having your mind raped. Two fates worse than death- 2 people who really didn't deserved them. Wildbow kind of likes to torture his heroic and/or kind-hearted characters, isn't right? I mean, I don't care what he's doing and will do to the evil villains- I won't even flick if I'll read an entire Arc with nothing but Coil or Heartbreaker or Jack being tortured for Chapters (on the contrary, I'll feel happy about the whole thing), but I will feel pretty bad if I have to read how the acid slowly dissolves Glory Girl while she screams in pain. And I don't even like her. Imagine how HURT I felt when Grue was Bonesawed.

This is the difference between how I feel about characters I like/I don't necessary like, but they're ok people and the rest...Alright, let's stat this new Chapter and see if Glory Girl will survive Prey 14.6

"Wards!" Weld hollered. "Crawler and Mannequin, like we discussed! Close ranks around Victoria!"
His words broke the spell that the scene had over Vista and Flechette. Surprising that there were so few Wards here, on a level. Kid Win wasn't in sight, nor was Chariot, and Clockblocker was under the sway of his own powers. Shadow Stalker, Aegis, Gallant and Browbeat were dead or gone.
The final sorta-maybe member of their group, Glory Girl, was being eaten alive by Crawler's acid.
Vista and Flechette moved to positions just behind and to either side of Weld. The group blocked Crawler's view of Glory Girl.
Miss Militia directed the adult heroes with a series of short commands and hand signals. Ursa and Assault led the way with Miss Militia, Prism, Battery and Triumph following, clearly aiming to flank Crawler and close the distance between them and Mannequin.
Crawler spat, and Vista used her power, reducing the distance the spit traveled to a tenth of what it might have been. Crawler leaped, and she widened the distance between him and everyone else so he stood in the midst of a clearing.

Flechette fired a bolt straight into Crawler. It penetrated his face and stuck there. Little surprise on that front; I'd seen her stick Leviathan with one of those giant needles. Crawler's face bubbled around the wound where it was rejecting the foreign object. Almost imperceptibly, it began to slide out.
He rumbled with a low, guttural laugh, mocking. Was he enjoying himself? He was a masochist, and it was the rare thing that could hurt him.
Miss Militia interrupted his gloating with a shot from a rocket launcher. His claws dug deep into pavement as he resisted being knocked over. She used her power to reload the rocket launcher and shot him again, uprooting him. Triumph used a full-power shout to send Crawler sliding across the clearing Vista had made. Vista widened the distance by stretching the landscape.
Prism and Battery went after Mannequin. Prism split into three copies of herself, complete with fireproof suit, closing in as Battery used her power to cross the distance and trade blows. I was only peripherally aware of Prism, given how she was based in New York, but seeing her in action reminded me of how she operated.
She was a self-duplicator, always producing two other versions of herself, but there were nuances. So long as one duplicate lived, she would survive whatever happened to the others, but they didn't last long. She could also expend them to enhance herself.
It made her an effective partner for Battery. Both were all about the setup followed by execution. Prism formed her duplicates and spread them out while Battery attacked, then drew her duplicates back into herself in a flash of light before delivering a crushing strike.
Mannequin was holding his own. The hits that did land seemed to have little effect, as he went limp and bent with them. It seemed he was keeping to the old adage of a supple willow bending in a hurricane that topples a sturdy oak. Even when Battery was moving at super speed, he was quick to take the advantage of a kick that went too high or a sweep aiming to knock his feet out from under him. He ducked beneath the former and hopped over the latter, then using his grappling-hook hands to haul himself a distance away.
He managed to get close enough to cut down two of Prism's duplicates, then pointed his hand at her third self, extending a blade from the base of his hand and firing it like a harpoon. Battery used up her charge and swept it aside before it could strike home and finish off the heroine.
Ursa, Triumph and Assault were getting into the thick of things with Crawler while Miss Militia and Flechette aided them from a distance. Ursa was creating forcefields in the rough shape of bears, two at a time. Weld stood, defending the two female members of the Wards. Glory Girl was looking worse for wear with every passing second.

Awesome, all the Wards and Protectorate members are jumping into action, helping Weld with Crawler and Mannequin. God Wildbow, have pity for your heroes and don't allow more of them to "enjoy" Glory Girl and Cache's treatment. Prism can duplicate herself and can survive, as long as a single version of herself is alive. Battery just saved Prism's life, Mannequin would have killed her. She seems pretty weak to me, power-wise, I wonder why her duplicates doesn't have guns (like Oni Lee) because I'm not sure what they can do while unarmed. Especially against enemies like Mannequin. Hell, not even Skitter's grenades and firegun were able to do something against Mannequin. Prim, you're pretty overwhelmed there. Ursa Aurora can create bear- shaped forcefields. Not duplicates as I believed first time when Skitter was talking about her power. Skitter, can't you try to take Glory Girl with you on your pokemon? I mean, fly close to where she's, grab her by any non-burned by acid part of her uniform and lift her up the beetle. Then leave the battlefield and take her straight to Amy. You can't do anything here anymore, let the heroes have their fun until Bakuda bombs will be finally dropped.

"Weld!" I shouted, drawing the beetle as close as I dared with the heat and smoke beneath me. "What can I do!?"
"More bombs on Mannequin!" He shouted.
"I'm out!" I replied.
"Then get out of here! You'll be one less person we have to protect! Our front line's pretty thin!"
Weld half-turned to glance back at Glory Girl, and I could see his expression change as he saw how bad she was. It was reaching the point that we might have to leave her for dead. There were spots where the muscle had necrotized enough that I could make out her internal organs. If the redness was any indication, the acid was extending to her vitals.
"Evac Victoria and Cache on your way out!"
Evac. The last time I'd had a scale to check, months ago, I'd weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds. With my gear, my costume, maybe that added up to one hundred and twenty. I had my doubts the beetle could manage me if I was even ten pounds heavier.
How could I carry someone larger than me, in addition to myself?
Maybe I didn't have to.
Had to think out of the box. If I could get her out of here, and if the beetle could manage her, I could remotely pilot it to Amy.
Those were two pretty huge ifs. No, couldn't pin my hopes on that.
I saw Cache using his power on himself. He was barely able to crawl, but he surrounded himself in his dark geometry, disappearing as it condensed down to a point. He'd taken himself out of this dimension. I wasn't sure if it was a journey of no return or a way to get some respite.
But his use of his power gave me another idea. Glory Girl had powers too.
"Can she fly!?" I shouted.
"What?" Weld asked. He glanced up at me, then turned his attention back to the fight. His body was tensed and ready to act the second Crawler made a move for his teammates.
"Ask her if she can fly!"

"She's insensate!"
"Try!"
He turned back to the superheroine and said something I couldn't make out.
If she responded, I didn't hear it.
Weld extended his arms into two long poles. They extended ten feet, then fifteen, then thirty. Reaching back, he caught Glory Girl with the ends, bending the tips to encircle her body.
"Wait!" I said.
He glanced up at me, then over at Crawler. The villain was spitting at Assault, who slid on the ground to evade the spray. Crawler took advantage of the gap in the defensive wall to stampede toward Vista and Flechette. Vista increased the distance, but not as fast as Crawler crossed it.
Under pressure, choosing the protection of his teammates as his top priority, Weld ignored my plea for a moment to think. He twisted his entire body to haul Glory Girl into the air, throwing her at me like a catapult might throw a boulder.
I changed my orientation so I'd be ready to catch her. Rather than try to wrap my arms around her, I moved so we were racing alongside her as she arced through the air. It gave me only a second or two to make the call about grabbing her. I didn't want to get that acid on me.

Good throwing, Weld, you're a PRO.

I'm not sure she can fly anymore, Skitter, she must be in a lot of pain. Yes, you can do innumerable amazing things while having your entire body and mind hurt, but not everyone is like you. Maybe Glory Girl is not very resistant at pain and I doubt that even you, Skitter, would be absolute calm if your vital organs can be seen through your melting body. Yes, I agree that she should fly, Skitter doesn't have the necessary strength to hold her, she's not Weld. But you can't expect someone in Glory Girl's position to use her powers, let alone to be able to rationalize. Looks like Cache can enter into his own body-portal, I wonder if he can heal himself by doing that.

I grabbed at the two things that seemed safe – the intact portion of her lower costume and her hair. I pulled back, hauling on both, but the beetle wasn't able to offer the necessary lift.
She was insensate with pain, and she struggled at what I was doing to her. I momentarily wondered if she'd hit me or the beetle with one of those punches that could crush stone. Worse, if she grabbed me and I couldn't break away, I'd plummet to the ground with her.
"Fly!" I screamed the word. "Lift up, Glory Girl!"
Her face was melting on one side, her eyes a ruin, her ear and the surrounding area of her head a bloody mess. I wondered if she could even hear me.
I was getting dragged down. How long before I had to make the call about letting go? It would mean letting her fall back into the burning city street. Maybe her forcefield would protect her, but the acid would continue to eat into her, until it got at something especially vital. She would die, slowly and painfully. Burning to death would almost be a mercy.
"Rise! Fly!" I shouted.
She began to lift up. I took the opportunity to let go of her hair, grabbing at the one hand that wasn't covered in acid. I pulled on her hand, and she followed my lead.
We moved as fast as my beetle was able. I knew she could fly faster, would have compelled her to even push me and the beetle forward if I thought I could have handled the navigation. As a group, we passed over a red scaled wingless dragon that I took to be
Genesis, wading through the flames on her way to the site of the battle.
My beetle needed a name. Had to have a better way of referring to it. A hercules beetle, but bigger, a giant. I thought about Hercules, about the myth; Hercules had borrowed the burden of the giant who carried the world. Atlas.
"Come on, Atlas," I urged him, "Faster."
Dumb to talk to him, when I knew for an absolute fact that he couldn't understand me. Maybe I was talking to myself.

She can still listen to commends and fly. Despite being in pain and semi-paralyzed. You have all my appreciation, Glory Girl, you're stronger than I thought you're until this battle.

Live, Glory Girl, live. I like Skitter's name for her beetle. Atlas. Its fitting. The Titan Atlas carried the sky on his shoulders and the beetle Atlas carries the person who might save the whole world one day.

We found my teammates still clearing a path through the edge of the area. They were all walking, the dogs in a formation around them, Bitch holding up the distant rear with Bastard.
I landed. Glory Girl didn't have the strength to stand, and collapsed like a rag doll.
"Holy shit!" Regent said, as he saw the extent of the damage.
Amy went white as a sheet.
"Heal her! Just don't touch the spots where the acid hit her!"
"I don't know- what happened?"
"Crawler spit on her, then knocked out her forcefield. Move! Fix your sister!"
She staggered forward and reached out toward Victoria.
"No," Victoria mumbled.
"You're dying," Grue spoke.
"No," Victoria repeated herself. "Not-"
She coughed sharply and mumbled in the same breath, and didn't bother trying to correct herself.
"Do it anyways," Tattletale said.
Victoria swung with her good hand, slamming it into the sidewalk. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact site. She coughed.
"No."
"If she hits me, she'll kill me," Amy said.
"Okay," Tattletale said. "If she doesn't want help, you shouldn't give it."
"She's not thinking straight. What I did-"
"Doesn't matter," Tattletale said.
Amy shook her head, talking over her, "She's always been emotional, passionate, unrestrained, and she's channeling all this new emotion into hate, because it's the closest equivalent."
"New emotion?" Regent asked. "You mean you mindraped her."

Glory Girl turned her forced love for Amy into hate and refuses to let her heal her. I understand you, Glory Girl, I honestly understand your pain, both physical and emotional, but you have to allow her to cure you, otherwise you'll die. All she wants now is to help you, not to hurt you more. As for YOU, Heartbreaker junior, I hope you'll not start accusing Amy of rape right now. Its not the right time, not the right place and you're neither the right person to call someone else a rapist. She mind-rapped her accidentally, under very strong and uncontrollable emotions given the events she went through before Glory Girl's arrival. YOU used your power to rape people because you WANTED, you LIKED, you FELT powerful during those moments and you were curious to see how its like to be in your daddy's skin. You're the last person to judge someone of being a rapist. The LAST person. :anger:

Amy looked like she'd been slapped across the face. I wasn't surprised, but hearing it said out loud was unsettling.
"Seriously?" Imp voiced the incredulity that everyone else seemed to be feeling.
"It was an accident," Amy said.
"How do you do that by accident?" Imp asked.
"Enough," Tattletale cut in. "Victoria, listen, I'm going to pour some sterile water over you, and hopefully it'll flush some of the acid away, okay? I don't know what else we can do for you. I know you can't see, so don't be surprised when it happens."
Victoria turned her head slightly, but she didn't respond.
"Okay," Tattletale said. She didn't have water in her hand. Instead, she grabbed Amy and shoved her in Glory Girl's direction. Amy looked at her, scandalized and horrified, but Tattletale only mouthed the word 'go'.
Amy knelt by her sister and touched her hand. Glory Girl's back arched as if she'd been electrocuted, and then she went limp. Paralyzed, unable to resist.
"I'm sorry," Amy said. "So, so sorry. Oh god, this is bad."
None of the rest of us spoke.
"I can't- can't figure out what this venom is. I can't touch it to see if it's organic, um, I can only see what it's doing. At least part of it is enzymes. It's denaturing proteins in her cells and using the byproducts to build more enzymes, and it's breaking down lipids as a side effect, shit. Oh god, and there's more to it. The fluid the enzymes are swimming in is some kind of acid."
"Can you fix her?" Tattletale asked.
"So much to do," Amy mumbled, "Have to counter the acid with some kind of physiological byproduct, have to stop the enzymes from liquefying her entire body, and repair the damage. Trying to make some kind of firebreak to stop the spread of the venom, withdraw the proteins the venom is using to propagate itself. There isn't enough tissue in her body for everything I need to do to fix her."
"Fixing her body and healing all the damage can come later," Tattletale said, as if she were reassuring Amy. "For now, keep her alive and fix what you did to her head."
"I have enough to manage without worrying about that." There was a note of desperation in Amy's voice.
"It's as much a priority as anything else. I said it before, if you don't do it now-"
"Shut up," Amy snapped. "I need to focus."
We watched her work. The dissolving began to slow, then fix. The wounds weren't closing, but the necrotized edges of the ruined flesh was turning from black to crimson.
"You going to go back?" Tattletale asked me.
I shook my head and glanced over to where the clouds was glowing orange with the reflected flames. "Nothing I could do. Too much fire, it cancels out my power, and it's dangerous for Atlas."
"Atlas. I like that."
I shrugged.
I turned to Amy. "Do you want me to bring bugs? Maggots eat only dead flesh, which might be helpful if-"
"No. I can handle that."
"Or I could get some of the more useless bugs, like the ones you used to make Atlas, for raw material."
Amy turned to give me an incredulous look.
"You said you didn't have enough tissue to patch everything together. If you wanted to put together a placeholder…" I trailed off.
"Nice," Regent said. "She could be a human-spider hybrid. Add some insult to injury with the mindrape thing."
I could see Amy tense.
"That's not what I'm saying," I told him. "Amy was saying the enzymes were dissolving proteins and other stuff. The bugs would be a source of protein, vitamins, carbs…"
"I'm a little surprised you know that," Grue commented. He didn't take his eyes off of Amy and Glory Girl.
"My power tells me some of it," I said, "And I did some reading after we took over our territories, trying to research that stuff. It was an idle thought, but I was thinking that if we got into a food shortage, I could feed my people with bugs."
Imp made a gagging noise.
"Wow," Regent said. "See, you just started off by making me think you were warped and creepy because you were suggesting
Panacea turn Glory Girl into some sort of bug-borg, and now you're making me think you're creepy and weird because you wanted to feed bugs to people who aren't your enemy."

That's a wonderful idea with using bugs to patch Glory Girl's wounds. Let me guess what will happen: Amy will transform the bugs' DNA into a human DNA, making it compatible with Glory Girl. Gosh, she probably can do the same with animals' DNA, if she'll manage to catch them, so Glory Girl would have a new body made of animal/bugs' DNA. Even if it doesn't sounds too sanitary and ethic to me, as long as Glory Girl's life will be saved, Amy can use whatever means are necessary to assure that her sister is out of any danger. Except for killing people, of course. Yes, Regent, there are people across the world (Asia, Africa, Australia, South America) who eat edible insects and don't complain. This is a TRUE fact. And stop calling Skitter creepy when she's so damn right. Nobody else in the Undersiders team is nearly half as creepy as you. Not even Bitch's dogs in their monster forms. I'd rather feel safer around them (despite my fear of dogs) than around you, you creep. Jesus, I can't be worried enough for Glory Girl because Regent took all her spotlight with his super-annoying and hypocrite attitude "sighs". :rage:

"It was just an idea," I said, maybe more defensively than I should have, "And bugs are nutritious. People all over the world eat them."
"Have you?" Grue asked.
I shook my head, "But I would have tried them first, if I decided to go ahead with that plan."
"Please," Amy cut in. "Can you?"
I turned to her. It took me a second to realize what she meant, after the line of questioning from the others.
"Yeah, of course," I told her. I began calling a swarm to me. I'd already exhausted the surrounding area of most, and the ones I hadn't already called forth were buried in the deepest recesses and most awkward areas, where it was so inefficient and time-consuming to bring them to me that I'd left them where they were.
It took some time to bring them to the area.
"How was the battle going?" Grue asked.
"The heroes seemed to be managing, but I don't know how things are going to turn out," I said. I looked at Shatterbird, who floated above us. "We could use her help."
"Don't trust myself to control her if she's too far away," Regent spoke.
I made a face. "Right. But she could carry you?"
"She almost dropped me once before. It's pretty hard to hold on to someone, especially without the leverage you have when you're on the ground.
The first bugs were arriving in front of Amy. She began dissolving them into their constituent parts and pressing them into Glory Girl's abdomen. When she raised her hand, they were gone. She held her hand out for more to gather while keeping one hand on Glory Girl.
Minutes passed before Amy stood and wiped her bloody hands on her pants. "Done as much as I can."

Glory Girl didn't look 'done'. Scars crawled across her body, angry-looking, surrounded by burns from the acid and flames. Her skin in areas where the flesh had melted away was so new and stretched so thin that it was translucent, and there was little to no body fat to pad the area between skin and muscle.
"Fix her," Tattletale said. "You know what you did to her, you know it was wrong, undo it and walk away."
"Can't," Amy shook her head, "I said I've done as much as I can, but there's so much more I need to fix. The parts I made with the bits I took from bugs will need to be replaced with real flesh."
"That's her choice. You saved her life, good on you, but you need to let her make the call."
"Why do you care so much? You're a bad guy."
"Oh yeah," Tattletale replied in a dry tone, "I'm evil, right? Maybe that's all the more reason to listen if I'm saying that something's fucked up and wrong?"
Amy shook her head, "She needs to eat, and I need to rest. I can speed up her digestion, like I did with breaking down the bugs inside her. But I need so much material that it's going to take a lot of food if I'm going to get everything she needs. One night, and I can make her normal."
Tattletale shrugged, "That's fine. Just undo what you did first."
"If she fights me and doesn't let me finish-"
"That's her choice." Tattletale repeated herself.
"No! That's- that's not her. That's the change I made doing the talking, or the aftermath of it. Even if I removed all the neural connections that have been made since, there's so much more in the emotional cocktails and hormonal balances. She's channeling it into anger instead of… instead of love."
Love. The implications were so fucked up. It was the sort of thingHeartbreaker did.
She hugged her arms against her body. There were tears in her eyes.
"You need to fix her mind now. For you, not for her. Maybe she'll forgive you at a later date, when she's thinking clearly again," Tattletale said. "Maybe then she can approach you, you two can start interacting again, you rebuild that trust over months or years, and you can finish healing her body when she gives you her permission."
"Or I can fix her now, undo what I did and then walk away forever, because I don't deserve forgiveness and she shouldn't have to live like this because- because a wrong I committed fucked with her focus or made her too aggressive or-"
"It wasn't like that," I said. "She didn't have time to react. I was watching. These injuries Crawler inflicted were not your fault."

Ok, I need to take a break because....my eyes are blurred by tears....I FEEL A LOT OF PITY FOR AMY AND GLORY GIRL, OK? "after a couple of minutes" Back. Amy doesn't think straight. The little confidence she had when she was helping Skitter is gone now. Gone like Glory Girl's body fat. Amy blames herself for what she did to her sister, for her feelings for her sister, she feels like she can't heal her completely (or maybe she secretly doesn't want- I don't want to accused her of selfishness but if this is the case, then she can be very SELFISH). She also blames herself for Glory Girl's wounds, wrongly thinking that if it wasn't for her mind-rape, Glory Girl would have been better equipped to fight Crawler without being injured by him (because she wouldn't have problems keeping her hateful emotions in check). I definitely agree with Tattletale, you SHOULD heal her, heal her mind and her body, she'll forgive you in time, but ONLY when you feel ready, you forgive yourself and you're completely sure that you're not going to do something bad accidentally again. Hope the things will get better with both sisters became their actual situation is a TRAGEDY in the most real sense of word.

"Doesn't matter. She would have reacted sooner if she'd been getting enough sleep, if her emotions weren't off kilter."
"Amy-" I started.
She shook her head so violently that I stopped mid-sentence. "I can almost feel right about this. I patch things up, and then I go."
Amy bent down and touched her sister. Glory Girl stirred and sat up. With Amy's help she stood.
"You're lying to yourself," Tattletale said. "And you're making things worse."
"Just- I'm just keeping her complacent. I'm okay with it if she doesn't forgive me for it. Don't deserve it anyways. I do this, and
then I'll go somewhere I can be useful. Only reason I haven't made more of myself and my power is because of the rules and regulations about exploiting minors with powers. Either go into government or don't work at all, and didn't want to go into government because they would have made me a weapon. And because I needed to be with my family."
She smiled, but it wasn't a happy expression. "Burned that bridge. But I'm sixteen now, I can get a job somewhere, start making a real difference with my power."
"And the last thing you'll do for your family is this? Hypnotizing your sister when she's already mad at you for assaulting her and fucking with her head?" Tattletale asked.
"The last thing I'm going to do is fix her."
"A means to an end." I stepped forward a little. "Trust me when I say I've been down that road. I don't recommend it."
"You don't understand."
"Wasn't it only a little while ago that you admitted you couldn't figure out what you needed to do to put things right? You asked me to make the call."
"Because you had the experience in making calls on morality in dangerous situations, situations where I can't even think straight," Amy said. Her voice hardened a little, "But I have the impression that you don't have that same expertise when it comes to family."
I thought of my dad, and it sat heavily enough in my mind's eye that I couldn't formulate a response.
Grue formulated one for me. "You're one to talk."
"I'm trying to fix this!" Amy raised her voice. "Why are you making this a thing? Why do you even care?"
Tattletale shrugged. "I talked about it with Grue, Bitch and Regent. We were considering offering you a place on the team."
I looked at Tattletale in surprise. I glanced at Bitch. Even her?
Amy scowled, "As if. You're such hypocrites. Regent mind controls people all the time!"
"Regent mind controls the monsters, the bad guys," I said.
"Taking advantage of bad people for selfish ends."
"What you're doing is selfish," Tattletale cut in. "You think you're doing it for her, but you're only doing it to soothe your own guilt."
"No," Amy said, as if that was that.
She glanced at me. "Thank you for bringing her to me so I could help her. Um. I don't want it to be a nasty surprise, so you should know I didn't give the bugs I designed any proper digestive systems. They'll starve to death before the week's over, but the Nine will be gone by then. If they aren't, we're all fucked anyways, aren't we?"

Why do I have this feeling that Amy (I'm not calling her Panacea anymore since she stated that she doesn't consider this codename hers anymore), after she'll finally find in her the necessary will and strength to heal her sister, she'll confess to authorities that she's responsible for everything that happened to Glory Girl (including Crawler's attack) then ask to be send to Birdcage because she would want to punish herself? There she'd probably meet her father and Marquis will help her to become stronger and more confident (from what I noticed during his short dialogue with Lung, Marquis seems like a very confident man, exactly opposite to his daughter). This is how I see the BIG possibility of Amy meeting her daddy and punishing herself for what she really did and whatever she THINKS she did. I half want this to happen, half not.

Poor Atlas...he's going to die because Amy didn't gave him a digestive system, after she finished making him. Grue, borrow her power and do something about Atlas, I don't want him to die, there's enough sadness in this Chapter.

I looked down at Atlas, then back to her. I clenched my fists. "I'm using them to help people."
"For now, sure. In the future? I couldn't be sure. So I put a time limit on them. Let's go, Victoria."
"Hey!" I shouted. My swarm stirred around me as the pair turned to walk away.
"No," Tattletale said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
"But she-"
"She's not thinking straight. We've all been there. You don't want to start a fight. We've got other enemies to focus on without making more."
I was pissed off enough that I wanted to hit someone. I couldn't even articulate the entirety of why I was so angry. I'd gone out of my way to be nice to her, to empathize, to save her sister, and save both of their lives. And this was how she repaid me? A slap in the face, a final gesture to make her distrust for me as blatant as possible?
"I could try," Grue said, "I've seen her power, but I don't get the full picture, I might kill it. Or fuck it up somehow."
"Please," I said.
He raised one hand and created a wave of darkness. It passed over the two girls.
I brought Atlas to Grue, and he laid one hand on the shell. I could feel shifting in Atlas' mandibles, head, thorax and abdomen.
The shifting stopped the same instant I saw Glory Girl spear straight out of the top of the cloud of darkness, flying high with Amy in her arms.
"Did you finish?" I asked.
Couldn't say," he sighed.
I searched Atlas with my power, trying to get a feel for his physiology. As with all the other instances, everything about him was invisible if I wasn't looking specifically for it, a black hole in the database of knowledge my power provided. He was created, and there was no genetic blueprint that my power could decrypt and analyze to figure out what part served a given function.

When I reached the area Grue had affected, I found it even darker, untouchable. The nervous system wasn't something my power could interface with.
"I had to model it off of something, and I get the feeling I don't have the same innate knowledge that Panacea does," Grue told me. "The only thing I have any knowledge about is myself. I don't know if it's going to work, but he has a human digestive system. Or something close to it, that worked with his body. Near as I can figure, everything connects to what it's supposed to."
"Thank you," I said. "Really."
Tattletale was still watching Glory Girl and Amy disappear. She glanced down at Atlas, "You'll have to figure out a diet that gives him every nutrient he needs, and pay a hell of a lot of attention to him. If you give him something his body can't process, it could poison him like that." She snapped her fingers.
I nodded. It was still better than nothing.
Sundancer was still clearing a path. I climbed on top of Atlas and rose above the ground, swaying a little in midair as I tried to control his flight enough to hover.
"Go," Grue said.
"What?"
"Scout, search. Check on the fight. You're restless."
"Don't like how that thing with Panacea ended."
Grue shook his head, "Me either, but we should focus on what we can do in the here and now."
"And I'm restless because I'm frustrated. There's nothing for me to do here. I can't handle the fire, can't do anything if I'm with you guys."
"Search for Jack and Bonesaw so we can put them down," Regent said.
I shook my head. "They disappeared. Literally. I'm not sure if they're dead or if they found a hiding spot."
"That's something we can work on," Tattletale said. "Siberian was heading to a destination, right? Heading southeast?"
"Sure."
"Did you see what direction Jack and Bonesaw were headed?"
I nodded. "Northeast from a point a few blocks that way." I pointed.
"Then I think I know where they went. It's quite obvious when you think about it. A place they could have researched in advance, unoccupied by anyone of consequence, capable of withstanding hits from virtually anything, supplied with food and water…"
Obvious? Maybe only to Tattletale. Still, with her hints, I could follow her line of thought to its conclusion.
"The emergency shelters for Endbringer attacks," I finished for her.

Goodbye for now, Dallon sisters, I hope I'm going to see you again as soon as possible. I'm so very emotionally invested in your common tragic story

. Thank you, Grue, for giving Atlas a human digestive system at least. He'll live, this is better than I expected.

And everyone, go to the emergency shelters, hunt S9 down and fucking kill them once for all, because they're responsible for half of all characters' misery. I so want them dead....Of course Jack will not die in the City, because my sweet, polite boy Theo must fulfill his destiny and kill him with his own hands after 2 years. But if Bonesaw, Crawler and Mannequin- ESPECIALLY Mannequin- will die, it will be more than ok for me.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

fabledFreeboota · Jul 13, 2018

blackarrow said:
Glory Girl turned her forced love for Amy into hate and refuses to let her heal her. I understand you, Glory Girl, I honestly understand your pain, both physical and emotional, but you have to allow her to cure you, otherwise you'll die.

As someone with a living will and a fear of being in a situation where I no longer have any choice, I think Glory Girl's choice for "Do not resuscitate," is something that gets a little overlooked in their tragedy.

rafuki22 · Jul 13, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, my darlings. Last Chapter, a lot of things happened. Good and bad. Weld fighting with Crawler and Mannequin to keep them away from his teammates, Skitter helping him from the sky, fighting a guerilla war while flying with her pet pokemon, and finally Glory Girl and Cache being severely injured by Crawler's acid. Glory Girl's mere existence seems to piss off quite a lot her own God, this is the only explanation I can find for her being exposed to such fucked up situations, even worse than anything Skitter endured so far as an Undersider. The only character whose suffering was pretty similar with Glory Girl is Grue, being flayed alive, having all your nerves turned into artificial webs and your organs exposed outside your body -all while feeling the entire resulted pain- is as bad as being melted by acid and having your mind raped. Two fates worse than death- 2 people who really didn't deserved them. Wildbow kind of likes to torture his heroic and/or kind-hearted characters, isn't right? I mean, I don't care what he's doing and will do to the evil villains- I won't even flick if I'll read an entire Arc with nothing but Coil or Heartbreaker or Jack being tortured for Chapters (on the contrary, I'll feel happy about the whole thing), but I will feel pretty bad if I have to read how the acid slowly dissolves Glory Girl while she screams in pain. And I don't even like her. Imagine how HURT I felt when Grue was Bonesawed. This is the difference between how I feel about characters I like/I don't necessary like, but they're ok people and the rest...Alright, let's stat this new Chapter and see if Glory Girl will survive Prey 14.6

Awesome, all the Wards and Protectorate members are jumping into action, helping Weld with Crawler and Mannequin. God Wildbow, have pity for your heroes and don't allow more of them to "enjoy" Glory Girl and Cache's treatment. Prism can duplicate herself and can survive, as long as a single version of herself is alive. Battery just saved Prism's life, Mannequin would have killed her. She seems pretty weak to me, power-wise, I wonder why her duplicates doesn't have guns (like Oni Lee) because I'm not sure what they can do while unarmed. Especially against enemies like Mannequin. Hell, not even Skitter's grenades and firegun were able to do something against Mannequin. Prim, you're pretty overwhelmed there. Ursa Aurora can create bear- shaped forcefields. Not duplicates as I believed first time when Skitter was talking about her power. Skitter, can't you try to take Glory Girl with you on your pokemon? I mean, fly close to where she's, grab her by any non-burned by acid part of her uniform and lift her up the beetle. Then leave the battlefield and take her straight to Amy. You can't do anything here anymore, let the heroes have their fun until Bakuda bombs will be finally dropped.

Good throwing, Weld, you're a PRO. I'm not sure she can fly anymore, Skitter, she must be in a lot of pain. Yes, you can do innumerable amazing things while having your entire body and mind hurt, but not everyone is like you. Maybe Glory Girl is not very resistant at pain and I doubt that even you, Skitter, would be absolute calm if your vital organs can be seen through your melting body. Yes, I agree that she should fly, Skitter doesn't have the necessary strength to hold her, she's not Weld. But you can't expect someone in Glory Girl's position to use her powers, let alone to be able to rationalize. Looks like Cache can enter into his own body-portal, I wonder if he can heal himself by doing that.

She can still listen to commends and fly. Despite being in pain and semi-paralyzed. You have all my appreciation, Glory Girl, you're stronger than I thought you're until this battle. Live, Glory Girl, live. I like Skitter's name for her beetle. Atlas. Its fitting. The Titan Atlas carried the sky on his shoulders and the beetle Atlas carries the person who might save the whole world one day.

Glory Girl turned her forced love for Amy into hate and refuses to let her heal her. I understand you, Glory Girl, I honestly understand your pain, both physical and emotional, but you have to allow her to cure you, otherwise you'll die. All she wants now is to help you, not to hurt you more. As for YOU, Heartbreaker junior, I hope you'll not start accusing Amy of rape right now. Its not the right time, not the right place and you're neither the right person to call someone else a rapist. She mind-rapped her accidentally, under very strong and uncontrollable emotions given the events she went through before Glory Girl's arrival. YOU used your power to rape people because you WANTED, you LIKED, you FELT powerful during those moments and you were curious to see how its like to be in your daddy's skin. You're the last person to judge someone of being a rapist. The LAST person.

That's a wonderful idea with using bugs to patch Glory Girl's wounds. Let me guess what will happen: Amy will transform the bugs' DNA into a human DNA, making it compatible with Glory Girl. Gosh, she probably can do the same with animals' DNA, if she'll manage to catch them, so Glory Girl would have a new body made of animal/bugs' DNA. Even if it doesn't sounds too sanitary and ethic to me, as long as Glory Girl's life will be saved, Amy can use whatever means are necessary to assure that her sister is out of any danger. Except for killing people, of course. Yes, Regent, there are people across the world (Asia, Africa, Australia, South America) who eat edible insects and don't complain. This is a TRUE fact. And stop calling Skitter creepy when she's so damn right. Nobody else in the Undersiders team is nearly half as creepy as you. Not even Bitch's dogs in their monster forms. I'd rather feel safer around them (despite my fear of dogs) than around you, you creep. Jesus, I can't be worried enough for Glory Girl because Regent took all her spotlight with his super-annoying and hypocrite attitude "sighs".

Ok, I need to take a break because....my eyes are blurred by tears....I FEEL A LOT OF PITY FOR AMY AND GLORY GIRL, OK? "after a couple of minutes" Back. Amy doesn't think straight. The little confidence she had when she was helping Skitter is gone now. Gone like Glory Girl's body fat. Amy blames herself for what she did to her sister, for her feelings for her sister, she feels like she can't heal her completely (or maybe she secretly doesn't want- I don't want to accused her of selfishness but if this is the case, then she can be very SELFISH). She also blames herself for Glory Girl's wounds, wrongly thinking that if it wasn't for her mind-rape, Glory Girl would have been better equipped to fight Crawler without being injured by him (because she wouldn't have problems keeping her hateful emotions in check). I definitely agree with Tattletale, you SHOULD heal her, heal her mind and her body, she'll forgive you in time, but ONLY when you feel ready, you forgive yourself and you're completely sure that you're not going to do something bad accidentally again. Hope the things will get better with both sisters became their actual situation is a TRAGEDY in the most real sense of word.

Why do I have this feeling that Amy (I'm not calling her Panacea anymore since she stated that she doesn't consider this codename hers anymore), after she'll finally find in her the necessary will and strength to heal her sister, she'll confess to authorities that she's responsible for everything that happened to Glory Girl (including Crawler's attack) then ask to be send to Birdcage because she would want to punish herself? There she'd probably meet her father and Marquis will help her to become stronger and more confident (from what I noticed during his short dialogue with Lung, Marquis seems like a very confident man, exactly opposite to his daughter). This is how I see the BIG possibility of Amy meeting her daddy and punishing herself for what she really did and whatever she THINKS she did. I half want this to happen, half not. Poor Atlas...he's going to die because Amy didn't gave him a digestive system, after she finished making him. Grue, borrow her power and do something about Atlas, I don't want him to die, there's enough sadness in this Chapter.

Goodbye for now, Dallon sisters, I hope I'm going to see you again as soon as possible. I'm so very emotionally invested in your common tragic story . Thank you, Grue, for giving Atlas a human digestive system at least. He'll live, this is better than I expected. And everyone, go to the emergency shelters, hunt S9 down and fucking kill them once for all, because they're responsible for half of all characters' misery. I so want them dead....Of course Jack will not die in the City, because my sweet, polite boy Theo must fulfill his destiny and kill him with his own hands after 2 years. But if Bonesaw, Crawler and Mannequin- ESPECIALLY Mannequin- will die, it will be more than ok for me.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

The difference between the heroes and the villains is supposed to be that the heroes do not do the things you say, it's not that I disagree with you, but I can understand, more or less, why they act as they do.
To be honest I do not like Amy, if I can help her, I would, but I never liked people with a black and white vision of the world, or with moral shortsightedness. (Do not get offended but I consider you one of them, maybe, in the end, I am too, but well ... that's life, complicated. Probably neither of us would make good heroes.)
I never liked it either when people simply do not respond to the questions that are written, here I am, writing this as best I can, just to receive an answer to a question (I mean, I understand if you can not answer, or do not want to, but I've seen people do it before.)
Soooo...yes.

blackarrow · Jul 13, 2018

rafuki22 said:
The difference between the heroes and the villains is supposed to be that the heroes do not do the things you say, it's not that I disagree with you, but I can understand, more or less, why they act as they do.
To be honest I do not like Amy, if I can help her, I would, but I never liked people with a black and white vision of the world, or with moral shortsightedness. (Do not get offended but I consider you one of them, maybe, in the end, I am too, but well ... that's life, complicated. Probably neither of us would make good heroes.)
I never liked it either when people simply do not respond to the questions that are written, here I am, writing this as best I can, just to receive an answer to a question (I mean, I understand if you can not answer, or do not want to, but I've seen people do it before.)
Soooo...yes.

I never said that I would make a good hero. Actually, I wouldn't like to be a hero. Too many restrictions. The life of a vigilante would suit me BETTER. I kind of want to be like Punisher, my favorite vigilante of all times. If I'd have his training, his skills, his toughness and enough cold blood to torture very bad people before killing them, I'd be like Frank Castle aka the Punisher (as much as I want them to be tortured and as much as I hate them, I don't have enough cold blood to do it myself, have to admit this. I can kill, but not torture. Or maybe I was never in a situation to test if I can go so far or not). I consider myself a person with a strong morality, so strong that I can go to extreme lengths to ensure that the justice is done. Of course, as long as they're not collateral victims. This is the only thing that stop me from becoming a well-intentioned extremist.

rafuki22 · Jul 13, 2018

blackarrow said:
I never said that I would make a good hero. Actually, I wouldn't like to be a hero. Too many restrictions. The life of a vigilante would suit me BETTER. I kind of want to be like Punisher, my favorite vigilante of all times. If I'd have his training, his skills, his toughness and enough cold blood to torture very bad people before killing them, I'd be like Frank Castle aka the Punisher (as much as I want them to be tortured and as much as I hate them, I don't have enough cold blood to do it myself, have to admit this. I can kill, but not torture. Or maybe I was never in a situation to test if I can go so far or not). I consider myself a person with a strong morality, so strong that I can go to extreme lengths to ensure that the justice is done. Of course, as long as they're not collateral victims. This is the only thing that stop me from becoming a well-intentioned extremist.

rafuki22 said:
I never liked it either when people simply do not respond to the questions that are written, here I am, writing this as best I can, just to receive an answer to a question (I mean, I understand if you can not answer, or do not want to, but I've seen people do it before.)

Exactly what I wrote.

blackarrow · Jul 13, 2018

Hello, lovely people. After the last Chapter, a SAD Chapter btw, I'm hoping that the new one will be way more happy, depicting beautiful moments from characters' lives, no matter if they're heroes or villains, a Chapter where I'll cry in happiness and laugh and have a general great time......FUCK THIS SHIT.....this is Worm we're talking about, we're not going to see such an abomination of a Chapter, it won't fit at all in the general theme of the worm-verse. This story knows only two moods: sadness and occasional a little bit of happiness. Nothing else between. But its ok, the masochist part of me considers that is a very exciting story told this way and can't stop reading it. The normal part of me is too curious and fascinated with characters to ever want to stop as well. I'm crazy, you're crazy, this story is crazy, the whole world is crazy.

So, Skitter is going to emergency shelters after S9 in 3...2...1..... Prey 14.7

"Three places nearby they could have gone," Tattletale said. "Two that fit with the direction they were running. The shelter underneath the central library, and the one near where Scion confronted Leviathan."
"I remember that one," I replied. We were walking at a brisk pace around the perimeter of the bomb site. The area to our left still burned, and Sundancer was in the lead, clearing away the worst of the fires ahead of us. I was walking with Tattletale and
Grue, Atlas following behind us. The others rode the dogs behind me.
"If we're going to check those locations, then…" Tattletale trailed off.
"If I had a preference, I'd rather we check the library first. Bad associations with the other spot."
Tattletale turned her head at that. "I thought you'd be proud."
I shook my head.
"I only heard secondhand, so I didn't get the full story, but you stabbed Leviathan with Armsmaster's weapon and distracted him from going after the civilians that were inside that shelter."
"Don't know how many I really saved. He had a good thirty seconds to a minute to unload everything he had on the people in there, and we all saw how much damage he did to some of our toughest capes."
Tattletale nodded.
"I dunno. I think of what happened back then, and I get this ugly feeling in my gut, like I did something wrong, or I didn't try as hard as I could have because there was someone in that shelter who I sort of hate. Hated? I'm not sure if I should use past tense."
"One of your bullies?" She asked.
"Teacher. I think that when I left the Undersiders, I guess I was thinking of considering becoming a hero or something. But with what happened at that shelter, I almost feel like it was the turning point. It was the first time I did anything that someone else could point to and call it heroic, and somehow I can't find it in myself to be proud about it. And it's like, that dream of being a
hero that I always had just kind of faded away in the face of reality."
"We're glad to have you, whatever your reasons," Tattletale said.
"Thanks," I told her.

I looked at Grue. "You okay?"
"I'm getting annoyed that people keep asking that," he spoke.
"Don't be a dick," Tattletale replied. "She's asking because she cares. We'reasking because we care. And you know that if it was one of us that went through what you did, you'd want to make sure we were in the right headspace to go up against the Nine."
Grue sighed, but he didn't respond.
"You'd tell us if you weren't feeling right, yeah?" Tattletale asked.
"If I had any idea what I felt, and it wasn't good, yeah."
"Good enough."
We watched as Sundancer cleared away the flames with her flickering sun. Flames bent toward it as if being influenced by a strong wind, thinned out and disappeared.
She cancelled out her power and turned back to us. "One minute to cool off and we're probably okay to go!"
"We should decide where we're going and how we're going to make our approach," Grue spoke.
"If they're waiting for their teammates, they'll stay inside the shelter for the time being," I said. "We'll be in a better position if we don't try anything overly complicated, like a pincer attack, if there's more than one exit. We can hit them hard enough with
Sundancer, Ballistic and my bugs."
Grue nodded. "I don't disagree. You two will have an idea if they're making their way out the other exit."
"The two shelters are close to one another," Tattletale said. "But I'm still a little worried they'll leave one location while we're checking out the other. I almost want to split up."
"Is that worth the risk of having half our group caught off guard by the Nine before the other half can arrive?" I asked.
"A better question," Tattletale said, "Is whether we can afford to let them get away. If we miss this chance to go on the offensive and let them escape, they go into hiding and work out a strategy."
"And we're not exactly in their good books," I said. "So we'd be a primary target."
Was I imagining it, or did Grue's darkness expand around him by a fraction?
"Sorry," I told him.
"Hm?" He turned towards me.
No use making it worse, if I was prodding a sensitive area by raising the threat the Nine posed. "Nevermind."
"Saddle up!" Tattletale called out.
Sundancer turned and sprinted back to the dogs. Regent hopped down from his seat and grabbed Shatterbird's wrists so she could
lift him into the air. I climbed on top of Atlas.
"What if-" I started. "No."
"Keep talking," Tattletale prodded me.
"What if I scouted the library, while you guys checked out the other site? I can fly, it's faster for me to get there."

As usual, Skitter is going alone to try to find S9 because she believes that they might hide inside the library. As usual, Grue will freak out, telling her to let them go with her, because he doesn't like how suicidal she always is. As usual, Skitter will refuse his suggestion, telling him that she is a big girl and she can handle herself. Again, as usual, something bad will happen, something that doesn't necessarily depends of Skitter and she'll start blaming herself for whatever happening, telling everyone over and over again how responsible she feels about everything and how she could have done something in a different way. The same story, Skitter, we already know.

So, last time Mannequin and Crawler were still fighting the heroes while Emily prepared to deploy Bakuda's bombs. Legend was fighting- somewhere else- with mr Voyeur (technically he's fighting with Siberian but since mr Voyeur controls all her movements and actions, I can say that the fight is actually Legend vs mr Voyeur via Siberian). So, Jack and Bonesaw may or may not be in a library, without their most powerful members of their team to protect them. But Bonesaw is a very powerful member as well, so she can either take hostages and turn them into ravenous beasts, sending them after Skitter so they'll have time to run, use her spiders to protect them or create some biological weapons that can affect everyone who's trying to come after them. Even without Siberian, Jack is not vulnerable. He have his mad genius by his side so he'll be fine, bastard.

"And we'd be one mistake away from you being killed," Grue said. "If not worse."
"Hear me out. Their only real long-range attacker is Jack, right? If I'm flying, the others won't be able to touch me."
"You think."
"I think. But if Jack's at the location, I'd be able to sense him before he got a bead on me. If that's the case… I can just attack without exposing myself, and I can alert you guys."
"Assuming he's not two steps ahead of us and waiting at some vantage point somewhere nearby," Grue said.
"He functions like a sniper," Tattletale said. "Ignore the fact that he slashes and stabs, he's a long-range combatant with a good
sense of what the enemy is doing and how his teammates move on the battlefield. He stays out of the way and makes surgical
strikes, then relocates to another vantage point. The only thing that keeps him from doing that all the time is how he has to stay involved with his team and keep them under control. Can't make it look like you're in charge if you're not there. With less teammates to manage, he's liable to go on the offensive."
"But I have the ability to find him," I pointed out. "Before he finds me. Amy gave me bugs that increase my range. I'll be taking on some risk, but it means we're able to check both locations at the same time and keep an eye out for the Nine. It's the best way to strike the balance we need."
"The balance," Grue said. He was clearly unimpressed.
"Minimal risk to maximum effect. Your group will be safe because you're all together and you'll vastly outnumber them. I'll be
safe because I'm airborne, and I'll have the advantage of an early warning. Offensively, you guys will have the Travelers and Bitch.
I'll have my bugs."

"Bonesaw countered your bugs last time around," Tattletale pointed out.
I nodded. "I have a few things in mind."
"If you're sure."
"She's not the only person who gets a say," Grue said.
"Name a better option, then?" I said.
"We all go to the library's shelter, then we all go to the shelter Leviathan attacked," he said. "Safer, smarter."
"If you're worried about me being defenseless," I suggested, "Regent could come with me."
"There's a reason we're keeping that pair close to us," Grue said. "If he gets taken down, you'll have to deal with Shatterbird on top of everything else. We're capable of handling her, I think. I don't know if you are."
I frowned.

Wow, Grue, I don't want to judge you for your remark, but it was kind of uncalled. I mean, Skitter can handle Shatterbird better than many others. Actually, she was the one who helped at Shatterbird's capture, by making her bugs and spiders attack and sting her. She also have her super duper armor costume and no Shatterbird's attack would be powerful enough to cut through it. So, she's immune at Shatterbird's power+ she can take her down even faster than it takes to Grue to shout: SKITTER, YOU'RE TEARING ME APART! Bruised male ego, Grue, eh? Are you envious that she can do much better than you?

Joke aside, I know how much frightened Grue is to know that Skitter is alone, fighting monsters by herself, and how eager he's to help and protect her, especially because he doesn't want the same nightmarish thing that happened to him to happen to her as well. Of course I understand his motivations, I just wanted to point that Skitter is much more tougher than some people (even from her team) gave her credit. And much more better than she sees herself.

Tattletale looked back at the others, then back at me. "Go."
I looked at Grue.
Tattletale pointed. "Go! Stay in contact!"
I turned and lifted off.
I kept to the cover of nearby buildings, and I flew erratically, so Jack wouldn't be able to hit me if he saw me coming. I was getting
more used to flying Atlas. I wouldn't have said he felt like an extension of my own body in the same manner as my swarm. He felt more like a prosthetic limb, or how I imagined a prosthetic limb might feel like. At first, it would be clumsy, every action requiring some level of careful thought and attention. Over time, it would become more second nature, a learned skill on my end. It would never match up to the real thing, but I could deal.
Already, I was getting more used to correcting orientation and keeping him level in the air.
We set down on a rooftop a distance away. There was a shed with a doorway that led into the building's interior, and we headed there to take cover.
I chained relay bugs together so one connected to the next, then extended them well beyond the range of my power. Their progress was relatively slow, but it did allow me to sweep over an entire region around the library. Bugs stirred into action at my
order, and they crawled or flew within a few feet of every horizontal surface that Jack or Bonesaw could be standing on.
No sign of them. The vault door beneath the library was closed and sealed.
I was about to return to the others when an explosion of dust and rock fragments ripped through a group of bugs a few blocks away from me.
A woman, no clothes. My bugs slid off her skin. Even the slightest abrasion on the surface of the skin served to tear through the legs and bodies of the bugs. Had to be Siberian. If the general shape of the large object she was holding was any indication, she still held the truck.
A handful of my bugs were wiped from existence a fraction of a second before more explosions of varying size ripped through the area around her. Legend was somewhere up in the air.

I drew my bugs together around Siberian's head, in the hopes that I could distract her. It was pretty thin, but there wasn't much I could do. Even a direct hit with Legend's lasers wouldn't affect her.
I shifted locations, flying half a block before landing again. I could just barely make out the pair of combatants with my swarm sense.
Something about what Legend was doing seemed odd. He wasn't firing constantly. Rather, his shots seemed to be strategically placed. He ripped apart the side of a building a moment before Siberian landed there, then tore through the five or six floors beneath her so she had nowhere to go except straight down. The instant she stepped free of the building's ground floor, he tore into the ground with a series of laser blasts that expanded outward, thinning as they went. It created a bowl-shaped indent, with rubble covering the storm drains that had been exposed by the lasers.
Carrying the truck, Siberian headed for the storm drains anyways, tearing through the piles of debris. Legend unloaded on the entire street, collapsing them around her. Some of my bugs descended with the pieces of the shattered street, and they could feel the warmth of the outside air mingling with the cold, stagnant air of the storm drains. He'd exposed her.
I'd seen Legend go all out, and this wasn't it. Why was he holding back? Granted, there was little point in hitting Siberian with everything he had, and it was easily possible that trying to drill a hole in the ground around her could theoretically give her the chance to escape, if she found some underground cavern or tunnel, but it could just as easily drown her. So long as she had the truck, Siberian had to stay places where there was oxygen. She couldn't, I was assuming, dive beneath the water and make her escape from there. Legend seemed to be going out of his way to keep her aboveground and exposed, attacking only when he had to.
He was conserving his strength. As much as both he and Siberian were powerhouses with more offensive capability than ninety-nine percent of people on the planet, this was a strategic battle. It was easily possible he was planning to keep this up for hours, harrying her, keeping her from getting her feet under her.
And with Siberian's master or controller in that truck, she was forced to move more carefully. If Siberian's creator didn't have food and water, this could turn into a battle of attrition. One Legend might even win. He was fit, healthy, athletic. Siberian's master, according to Cherish, wasn't. Added to that, being in that truck as Siberian leaped around couldn't be fun.
I felt like I was still missing something. Why was Legend fighting here, of all places? Whatever else was going on, they were causing pretty horrific property damage, and it had to be hard to fight Siberian in a place with this many high-rises. She could disappear into building interiors, and even if he lowered the height he was flying at, Legend was probably having to penetrate three or four stories of building to get to her.

Oh, Legend is fighting mr Voyeur at the library? The good thing is that mr Voyeur can't teleport Siberian wherever Bonesaw and Jack are hiding otherwise he'll remain defenseless inside the truck. In the meantime, Skitter can find and attack them, without any fear that Siberian will come after her. Mr Voyeur is kept busy by Superman....I mean, Legend, who despite fighting awesomely, is doing something that doesn't seem very right to me. Even Skitter is suspicious regarding Legend. What the hell, hero, why did you choose to attack mr Voyeur in a place filled with buildings, where Siberian's master can hide pretty easy? I mean, he can make Siberian enter into a building, jump from his truck, hide in one of the rooms, manipulate Siberian so she continues to keep the truck like she's protecting someone, distracting Legend enough so the blind cannibalistic pervert can just run away, followed by Jack and Bonesaw. Its like Legend WANTS for mr Voyeur to get away. Its like Legend WORKS for....Gosh, I hope not, I really hope this is not something real. I like Legend, he's my favorite Triumvirate member and I don't want to end up disliking him because he let a criminal to be free. Don't do this to me, Legend. Don't be corrupted, please.

I kept my distance from the fight as I directed Atlas toward the library. With my bugs, I was able to more or less follow the fight. I couldn't touch Siberian directly, but I could sense where Legend was directing his attacks, and how he was positioning himself.

I continued to do what I could to help Legend, sending bugs at Siberian in the hopes of distracting her or finding some way into that truck. They searched the windows but failed to find a gap. Some crawled into the exhaust, others into the undercarriage-
She fell into a trench as Legend leveled another series of blasts at her, and the movement of the truck coupled with Siberian's power and its rough texture murdered a solid ninety-percent of the bugs I'd used. The remainder made their way deeper inside.
The bugs could scent something they registered as food. A heavy smell, fetid, like garbage. It was rank in there. They crawled through the air conditioning vents and into the truck's interior.
The driver's seat was empty. I sent the bugs into the back. Nothing.
The truck was empty?
With my bugs, I drew out words in mid-air high above me, informing Legend: 'TRUCK EMPTY – SIBERIAN BLUFF.'
Had she assessed what Legend was doing, turned it around on him? If her real self was somewhere safe, somewhere with food and water, that meant Legend would lose any battle of attrition, if that's what he was aiming for.
I couldn't think of another reason her creator would leave the safety of the truck.
Hovering over the library, I got my phone out and dialed.
"Tattletale?"
"Sup?"
"Legend's fighting Siberian here, but the maker isn't in the truck. I think he's in the vault with Jack and Bonesaw."
"Someone's sealed over this door with a heavy pad of metal, because Leviathan or someone tore it down. My gut's telling me the
Nine didn't gather inside and weld it shut behind them, but I can't ignore the possibility that Bonesaw's spiders did it. One in
twenty chance, I'd guess? We'll know in about thirty seconds, after Sundancer burns through."
"Right. A few more things that are bugging me. Can I use your brain?"
"Go ahead."
"Legend's fighting Siberian here. It feels wrong. He's working to pin her down, slow her movements as much as he can. I know he's probably buying time, trying to wear her other self out, but why not a place with flatter terrain? Why not a place where there'll be less cover for her and less collateral damage? I know Siberian goes where she wants, and if her other self is in the shelter, that's probably a big reason she came, but-"
"Your gut is saying something's off."
"My gut is saying something's off."

My gut is saying something's off too. Especially with Legend of all people. He's hiding something, he might not be the shining hero how everyone see him. I am already suspicious about Eidolon (the way Scion was looking at him, like he could read his mind), now I'm suspicious about Legend too. Great, only Alexandria remained possible the only Triumvirate member without secrets or a dark side. But who knows what kind of surprises she's going to have later...Ok, I'm pretty paranoiac, I don't trust many people in real life, I don't trust fictional characters as well. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt but I was disappointed many time when I did that so...its hard, is very hard for me to trust someone who behave so weird like Legend, for example, in a world where a secret organization is planning things involving the world, where some characters can wear masks completely opposite to their true personalities, pretending to be something they're not, when villains can be heroes and heroes can be monsters. Worm-verse is even more suspicious than real life and since in real life I have troubles trusting people, its not hard to guess how many difficulties I have trusting these fictional characters. Hell, Lisa is my favorite character and I still ask myself, at times, if she doesn't hide something more than she let people see. If she's entirely honest with Taylor or she keeps things away from her friend/teammate. Ok, let's say that I half trust Legend and I half doubt about him. I'm giving him half of the benefit of the doubt. He should consider himself lucky.

rofl:

"Okay. I'd guess the Protectorate have more of a plan than the one firebombing."
"They're going to do it again?"
"No. The first one, going by what you've said and what I've picked up, hasn't done much for our side. It's going to be something else."
"And we don't know what?"
"No clue. What else?"
"Minor, but if her other self is in the shelter, where are Jack and Bonesaw? And if they're in the shelter, where's Siberian's real body?"
"She's spent years with them, they have a rapport, and they're dependent on one another. Maybe he felt it was safe to approach them."
"Maybe. Nothing more specific?"
"Don't have much to work with. What else is going on?"
"Legend's holding back. Conserving his strength. I get that he's trying to win a fight of attrition, but as far as I can tell, he hasn't
changed his tactics or the pacing of his attacks much since I informed him that the creator isn't in the truck."
"He's buying time for something? Someone? Maybe Scion is headed this way? No. Don't get that vibe. Hmm," Tattletale mused.
"We just got inside. They aren't here."
I looked down at the library. "Vault door, how do I open it?"

"Can't say until I see the control panel myself. The shelters are supposed to open with a command from the PHQ-"
"Which was annihilated," I said.
"Right. Or the PRT headquarters, on the Director's order. There's bound to be another code that can be used in case those places get knocked out of commission."
"How did they get in?"
"They have a tinker," Tattletale said. "She may work primarily with biology, but that's not going to be the full extent of Bonesaw's knowledge. Look at those spiders. Some basic hacking isn't out of the question. Anyways, I can figure it out when I get there. Unless you want to take the brute force route."
I looked down at Atlas. "I don't have enough brute force, and neither does Atlas."
"Legend does. We're on our way. See you in a few."
"Right."
I hung up.
I drew more words in the air with my bugs, near Legend.
'FOUND THE 9. UNDERGROUND SHELTER.'
As an afterthought, I added:
'MAYBE CIVILIANS INSIDE.'
I drew an arrow by the words. Then, to make it as clear as possible, I drew a giant arrow in the sky, pointing down at the shelter door.
I was going to look foolish if they weren't inside, and maybe cost Legend in whatever plan he was operating under.
I could feel him changing directions. He kept facing Siberian, unloading laser blasts, but he was flying my way.
Siberian dashed forward. I could feel her cutting a swath through the swarm as she ran, the truck in one hand, one corner of it dragging on the ground, cutting a line into the pavement. She leaped into the air, out of the reach of my swarm-sense. I felt something massive collide with the bugs that were in the air around Legend, felt more die as he shot a laser and caught them in the area.
She'd thrown the truck, and he'd obliterated it.
Legend shifted into high gear, flying out of reach of Siberian as she lunged for him. He dove, hard, and I could imagine her leaping off the side of a second building, trying to get her hands on him.
Legend turned my way and flew towards the library. I hurried out of the way, directing Atlas to higher altitude, just in case Legend decided to level the place.
The leader of the Protectorate had arrived on the scene, and I could sense Siberian on the ground, hot on his heels. He raised one hand, and a laser beam shot forth, splitting into eight smaller beams that bent in the air. They hit the outside edge of the vault door with precision, evenly spaced out, then drifted in a clockwise direction. The door toppled free.
Legend spread his arms, and hundreds of individual beams radiated out from his body. Three quarters of them turned in sync to spear towards the library, stabbing through the architecture. Other beams split off to strike through doorways and windows and across rooftops. No less than three struck me.
I flinched and nearly lost my seat on Atlas, but found it wasn't much hotter than steaming tap water, and it only lasted two or three seconds before cutting out. Siberian had approached close enough to demand Legend's attention, and he'd terminated whatever it was he'd been doing.
I turned my mind away from whatever the beams had been intended to do and toward my own contributions to this fight. Had to strike before they got their bearings. I took advantage of the pause to send bugs flowing into the shelter.
I could count a number of people, young and old. The mosquitoes in my swarm could scent blood. Twenty or so people were inside the shelter, standing there. There was metal on their bodies, like backpacks or prosthetic body parts, but they didn't seem to be hurt.
There were three more inside, but I wasn't feeling so generous as to call them 'people'. They stood apart: two men and a preadolescent girl.
It was them. The Nine.

Legend destroyed the truck, thinking that mr Voyeur could be there (mr Voyeur was pretty smart to use the empty truck as a decoy) OR he destroyed the truck, knowing that mr Voyeur is not there and Skitter is watching the whole scene, in order to make her believe that he's a hero with a mission- to kill Siberian's master and show her that she should never doubt him. Hmm, he's smart, he wouldn't be Triumvirate's leader if he wasn't smart and very capable. Any theory about why Legend destroyed the empty truck might be right. So, mr Voyeur is hiding in the shelter, along with Jack and Bonesaw and a lot of hostages. Great, no matter what you're doing, Skitter, just don't hurt hostages. I always become worried when hostages are mentioned. Unless, these hostages were already turned by Bonesaw's medical genius into monsters, then I can say that there's no other way to stop them and put them out of their misery except for killing them.

I couldn't trust my ability to get to Legend and communicate the necessary details in time, and I might even be endangering him by getting too close to Siberian. I couldn't say for sure how he would really act in the field, but his PR sold the idea of a legitimate good guy who would balk at attacking an enemy with a hostage.

Or maybe he wouldn't. It could even be a mercy, sparing someone from one of the Nine's clutches. Siberian devoured people alive.
Either way, it was better to try to catch his attention with a written message: '20 CIVILIAN, JS, BS, SIB'.
He was too distracted by Siberian to see it. She wasn't as fast as Battery or Velocity, but she had the physical power to move quickly, and she was leaping between buildings to throw herself at him with the speed and aim of an arrow shot from a bow.
I tried leaving another message for Legend, stating the same thing. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him looking at me. Our eyes met. He nodded, and I turned my attention to the shelter.
I didn't want to do this half-assed. No mistakes this time around. I gathered a swarm of generous size, but I held it at bay. There were more preparations to carry out. I drew the capsaicin bugs from beneath my armor and added them to the swarm. I drew out silk threads and held them suspended in the air, ready for use. For a final measure, I withdrew a lighter and the changepurse from the utility compartment at my back.
Primary swarm in first. As one singular mass, they flowed inside. The capsaicin-laced bugs joined them, going straight for the eyes.
Jack reacted, as did the man, but Bonesaw was unfazed. I saw Siberian flicker. Legend noticed as well. He snapped his eyes to me, and then the shelter.
The creator needs to concentrate?
My heart was pounding so hard I felt like it would dislodge me from Altas. Bugs settled on the three members of the Nine and then they attacked. It wasn't the sort of attack I'd ever done before. I'd had bugs bite, I'd had them sting, I'd even used them to deliver payloads of their various venoms.
I'd always held back to some degree. The only ones I hadn't held back against had been untouchable. These three weren't so lucky.
Mandibles bit into flesh, seeking not to pinch and inflict pain. Ants scissored flesh away, beetles tore and rent into the flesh, flies spat their digestive enzymes onto the exposed flesh.
I buried them in every kind of insect I had that could eat, cut or pierce meat. The bugs didn't eat their fill: they simply bit, chewed, let the food fall from their mouths, then bit again.
Bonesaw's hands were smooth as glass as she reached for her belt. She was cool and collected, even as the bugs slowly flayed her.
She was stopped short as the silk strands tangled her ceramic fingers.
My bugs could hear her speak. Though I could barely make out the words, I thought maybe the first one was 'Jack'. She held out her hands.
I tried to bind him, but tying his arm to his side was harder than using silk cords to lash fingers together. At least partially blinded by the capsaicin, he swiped his knife a few times in Bonesaw's direction. He cut her several times, and my bugs could feel her flesh part around her collarbone and face. Some of the cuts were on target, however, and the threads around her fingers were severed. An instant later, she was free to put together her anti-bug smoke, working her hands to break the threads as I tried to tangle her fingers again.
Okay. Not the end of the world. The bugs were still devouring the three, and I still had a plan in mind. An idle hope.

I got the confirmation that mr Voyeur is not a Tinker but a Master. He needs to concentrate to use his Siberian properly. If he's in pain, he would make her flicker, maybe even disappear for a while. Which is PERFECT. Good job, Skitter, give them PAIN.

Make them SUFFER.

Attack them for hours if its necessary, until all their flesh will be eaten by insects. Too bad that Bonesaw can turn off her pain sensors, making herself immune to any attempt of giving her pain. But even if I know that they'll escape, I can enjoy a little seeing the treatment that Skitter is giving them.

Now lets see if Legend will do something to stop Skitter from tormenting mr Voyeur. If he'll stop her, he's Cauldron man without any doubts. If he won't do anything, he might either be a honest hero or he knows that mr Voyeur can't die anyway thanks to his safeguards provided by Bonesaw.

I withdrew the tissues I'd wadded in the changepurse to keep the contents from jingling or rattling around. My bugs took hold of them and carried them into the air, two or three dozen in all.
I tested the lighter, then held it out to ignite the first tissue.
It was a slow burn, taking fifteen or twenty seconds to consume the paper. The flies that carried it died as the flame reached them, consuming them.
By the time the first was burned, my bugs were positioning the second, allowing it to ignite. In this manner, I chained them one after the other. A slow-moving relay of flame.
Bonesaw had her smoke going, despite my efforts to rebind her fingers, and I could feel it murdering my bugs en-masse. I pulled them away and out of the shelter, leaving only a few to track the movements of the Nine.
The trail of burning tissues made their way inside the shelter. I ignited the last few tissues and sent them to Bonesaw. I could feel the bugs die as they hit the smoke.
Nothing. I swore.
It had been too much to hope for, that the smoke was flammable. Even if the smoke had exploded in the mildest possible way, it
would have at least given me a countermeasure.
I turned away from the area. I'd told the others I would play safe. I'd tried what I could, I'd maybe even done a little damage to them, now I'd back off. I'd earned Siberian's attention by attacking her creator, but she was preoccupied with Legend, so that was one threat I didn't have to worry about. The rest of the Nine were still inside.
Legend, for his part, was keeping up the measured, carefully paced assault. I saw him raise one hand to his ear.
A communication from his team? Had something happened with the rest of the Protectorate? Or the other members of the Nine?
He dove straight for the shelter. Siberian gave chase, and without slowing in the slightest, he raked a laser across the street to render her footing less stable. It couldn't have bought him more than a fraction of a second, if it even made a difference at all; I could see her placing one foot on a shattered piece of road that wouldn't have held a squirrel without collapsing. She used it to kick herself forward, soaring after Legend, hands curled into claws. He was ahead of her by only ten or fifteen feet.
The scattered bugs I had at the fringes of the extermination smoke gave me only a half-completed picture. Legend inside, blasting a laser in the direction of the cloud where Jack, Bonesaw and Siberian's creator were. He grabbed one of the civilians that were standing dumbly in the shelter, only to get mobbed. She latched onto him, and the others did the same, trying to drag him down. My bugs felt a flash of heat as he used his laser to blast at them and free himself. Another laser speared out of the top of the Library, followed soon after by Legend, spearing up toward the sky. He directed another laser straight down at the library, continuing to fly straight up.
That was reason for me to do the same. I rose with one hand on Atlas' horn, and I drew my phone with the other. I speed dialed Tattletale. Trusting to her penchant for picking up the phone on the first ring, I started shouting before I heard any response,
"Something's up! Take cover and get back!"

Not only Legend allowed Skitter to injure mr Voyeur, but he went after him herself. Hmmm, I still don't know what to believe about Legend, maybe he's playing a role to convince Skitter that he's the good guy here? Possible. I'm keeping all my theories and predictions about him and his strange actions. The hostages were controlled by Bonesaw, as I expected. Legend had to kill them otherwise they'd have killed him. It was something necessary to do.

I wonder what's going on. Does Protectorate is planning to bomb this area too in order to kill the most important S9 members? Or....the heroes are losing to Mannequin and Crawler even if Bakuda's bombs were already deployed?

The stealth bomber streaked across the sky, just as it had before. Its payload this time was smaller, barely visible.
The devastation wasn't so easy to miss.
The only word for it was chaos. I could hardly pick out the individual effects as they mingled. A cloud of yellow-green smoke being pulled into a spiral around a vortex, which was causing the section of the library that had turned to glass to shatter and implode. There was a flare of brilliant mixed colors I could barely look at, frying a scattered assortment of boneless, faceless, fleshy monsters. One monster made it four steps before being turned to dust. Where the dust touched, more dust was created, until the vortex expanded enough to start pulling it all in, stopping what might have been an endless chain reaction.
I could see time slowing in one spot, I could see pavement heating into a liquid in another. I could see one area that was serene, untouched, a bubble where a newspaper that had been scattered on the ground was flapping violently with the movement of air.
Half a building was annihilated by the flash of an explosion, and it toppled into the midst of the bomb site. In seconds, it was obliterated and chewed up.
The effects spread and expanded all down the street, a stripe of this madness three blocks wide, extending into the midst of the blaze from the previous bombing run.
I drifted toward Legend, raising my hands over my head to show I meant no harm.
"Thank you for the assistance," he spoke, when I was in earshot. "Some was misguided or off target, but it did make a difference."
I could only nod.
He put one hand to his ear, then paused for several long seconds. When he spoke, it was vague. "Acknowledged."
I waited, staring down at the disaster area below.
"Crawler and Mannequin observed to be in the blast site."

"How did they disengage while keeping them there? They- they did disengage?"
"Clockblocker managed to tether Mannequin in place. Crawler freed himself from the same trap by tearing himself in two against the immovable object. It was Piggot who managed to keep Crawler in the blast area."
"How?"
"She had Weld pass on a message, telling Crawler what we had planned. He was so tickled at the idea that we would be able to hurt him that he stayed where he was while the teams made their retreat."
"Just like that?"
"Apparently so."
"If he survives-"
"He didn't."

Ok, I was half right, everything was bombed with Bakuda bombs, including the library. The heroes are fine, good news.

No, NO WAY, I don't believe that Crawler and Mannequin are dead, these fuckers must be still alive, they just can't stay dead. Death herself hates them and will never agree to take them with her. She doesn't need problems with these creeps. Until I'll see their corpses and I'll get the confirmation that they're the original bodies and not duplicates created by Mannequin, I'll highly doubt they're dead. No reason to party now.

There was a series of smaller explosions below. I could see a section of ruined building glowing red, then detonating in a blast of light that sent a nearby glacier spinning into a patch of burning ground.
"And the other three?"
"Remains to be seen. The civilians are dead, but it's something of a mercy. Bonesaw's mechanical spiders were welded to their skeletons, allowing her to remotely control them. Like zombies, only they were aware and in incredible pain. I expect she had measures to inflict agonizing deaths on them if we attempted to disconnect them from her spider-frames. Maybe I could have saved them, can't say. From the glimpses I saw of them, I don't know if they would have thanked me."
We spent a minute staring down at the devastation.
I ventured to ask him a question, "Can Brockton Bay take this? It feels like it was on the verge of collapse already. Add this mess, the firebombing… can we really come back from it?"
"You know this city better than I do, I'm sure. I like to think people are stronger than they appear at first glance. Perhaps the same goes for cities as well?"

"I'd like to think so. But if I'm being realistic-"
I stopped mid-sentence.
My bugs had found a group of individuals on the edge of the blast radius.
"No fucking way." I pointed.
Siberian flickered violently as she crouched beside Jack and Bonesaw, one hand on each. In between the three of them was a man, hunched over.
Legend raised one hand, but he didn't shoot.
"Legend?"
"They haven't seen us. I would like to take out Jack or Bonesaw while they're distracted and unguarded, I just need Siberian to step away or let go of them."
The group shifted positions, so the man had an arm around Jack's chest and an arm around Bonesaw's shoulders, Siberian behind him.
"See that?" Legend asked.
"What?" I could barely make them out from our vantage point. "I can't."
"My eyes are better than most. A minor benefit of my powers. The backs of his hands, perhaps you can make out the tattoos? A cauldron on the left hand, a swan on the right."

I'm not so optimistic as Legend about the City. Its already in ruins, 70% of it. And I'm being generous. Not even Coil himself will be able to make Brockton Bay GREAT AGAIN, the City is beyond salvation. Yes, buildings can be rebuilded but everything else can't be fixed so easy. Bakuda's bombs effects- that might last for few days, years or eternity, the contaminated water, numerous viruses that Bonesaw probably created in the meantime, the heavy pollution (fire, bombs, powers) and many other things with disastrous effects over the City. This Biohazard City should be wiped off the face of the earth (after a general evacuation, of course), not saved. I'm getting the confirmation that mr Voyeur is working for Cauldron. Something that I kept saying all the fucking time. No wonder they want to protect him. He's their man.

"I- I don't follow."
"No," he sighed a little. "I suppose you wouldn't. It does mean we know who he is."
"Someone I'd know? An old costume?"
He shook his head. "A scholar."
Jack glanced up, and Legend fired in the same instant. With Siberian's strength, the group of the Nine lunged to one side, disappearing behind cover. I sent bugs after them.
My swarm sensed other arrivals. The Undersiders and Travelers came from the west, taking a circuitous route around the top end of
the bomb site. Legend fired a series of blasts after Siberian and gave chase, but she was keeping a building between her group and Legend. He stopped where he was, one hand outstretched, and touched his ear.
"My teams are on their way," he said.
"That's good," I said. "The Undersiders and Travelers are too. I'm going to go fill them-"
"We need them to back off," he interrupted.
"Another bombing?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No. It seems we're facing the worst case scenario."
"We're winning," I said, incredulous. "You guys took out two of them, we've got them on the defensive-"
"Exactly," he interrupted me. "We're winning. And we've broken enough of Jack's rules for his 'game'. Now I fear we're about to see whatever 'punishment' it was that Bonesaw prepared for us."

Fuck, they escaped. I so predicted this. And fuck, Bonesaw is going to contaminate the City, making it inhospitable even for Skitter's bugs. A virus, maybe? What kind of virus? Something to turn people into zombies? Into still-aware -of- themselves- but- too -crazy -to -control -their actions cannibals? Or to have all parahumans' powers getting out of their control and have them destroy what remained of the City including killing each others and non-powered people? Any scenario is bad but I'd be damned if I'll say that I'm not very excited about whatever Bonesaw planned. On the contrary, I'm more excited than ever.

Just don't turn all citizens into non-living/living mannequins, Bonesaw, ok?

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

fabledFreeboota · Jul 14, 2018

blackarrow said:
Just don't turn all citizens into non-living/living mannequins, Bonesaw, ok?

Bonesaw's home appliances. Just off the interstate, exit S9.

blackarrow · Jul 15, 2018

Hello, wandering souls. Last time, I got the confirmation that mr Voyeur worked/is working for Cauldron (given the cauldron tattoo on his left hand) his real name is mister Cauldron, his ancestors were executed during Salem witch trials and he never received Hogwarts acceptance letter -because of everything mentioned he went crazy and decided to be as murderous and destructive as possible. Don't ask me how I know these information, I have my own ways to find them.

Ok, S9 did what they promised they'll do in case of heroes' implication: contaminate the city with a virus. I want to be clear: I'll not blame heroes or Emily. Actually, I APPRECIATE what Emily did, I'd have done exactly the same. The only casualties were Glory Girl and Cache, no civilian injured during the bombardment (heroes not being civilians, but soldiers who fight for what is good and right), Mannequin and Crawler are possible dead (its a small possibility however and I'm expecting from time to time for any other them to appear, taking everyone by surprise. But if a single one actually died then Emily is a fucking hero, she just eliminated an absolute monster). I don't have any reason to judge Emily for what she did, anyway, nobody can guarantee me that S9 would have kept their word if heroes wouldn't have cheated. They're psychos, psychos doesn't usually keep their words or play honest. I think that no matter what Emily would have done, they'd have still released the virus. As for the virus, I don't think its something mortal because Bonesaw is an artist and she won't be pleased if she'll just kill everyone. She needs to be inventive, creative, to scare, terrorize people, not kill them. Or maybe make them kill each others by turning them into psychos with uncontrollable urges to kill. Or worse, the virus might affect only the parahumans, making them crazy enough to attack everything in their way. Imagine the heroes killing innocent people, imagine the heroes eating people even if they know what they're doing but they can't control themselves. Legend alone can kill half of heroes and villains. Imagine the heroes becoming normal again and seeing what they did....

That would be extremely destructive for their own minds, will fuck up forever the respect and admiration people have for them and will turn non-powered humans against parahumans, creating a rift between them that will never be fixed again.

I can't see something worse than this. That would be your art, Bonesaw Prey 14.8

"How did it go!?" Tattletale called out to me before I'd even landed.

I set Atlas down on the ground and hopped off. "Whatever the fuck they just dropped on the city, it apparently took out Crawler and Mannequin."
"I'll believe it when I see it," Tattletale said. "I think that was Bakuda's stuff they just used. What about the other members of the Nine?"
"They're on the run. Last I saw, Siberian's creator looked pretty rough. Not sure if the spider bites and stings will kill him or if
Bonesaw will manage to counteract it. Depends on whether Legend and the other heroes can keep up the assault long enough to keep Bonesaw from getting to work."
I could see Bitch react to the mention of Siberian's creator. She looked startled, then scowled.
"You found them?" Tattletale asked. "Siberian and Legend?"
"Yeah. Legend told me to scram, in case Bonesaw deploys the threat she's been holding over our heads, and so I don't get in the way. I would have fought to stay, but he's an intimidating guy to argue with."
Grue nodded. "I wouldn't feel bad about it. It means we can serve as backup if the heroes lose."
"And this threat? Do we know what it is? Some zombie apocalypse?" Regent asked.
"No." Tattletale shook her head. "She sees herself as an artist. She's going to want to do something that catches us off guard, something that scares us in a way that simple horror movie monsters don't."
"I don't know about you guys," Sundancer spoke up, "But monsters scare me enough."
"Says the girl who can vaporize buildings and give Leviathan pause for thought," Regent said, giving her a sidelong glance.
"Leviathan broke half the bones in my body. The only reason I'm standing here is Panacea," Sundancer said, a little defensively.
"You two do raise a point, though," Tattletale cut in. "Capes are powerful. If she wanted to scare the locals, she's done that. I'd be willing to bet the ace she has up her sleeve is going to be more aimed at scaring people like us, like Legend. She wants to terrorize the strongest, target people who everyone looks up to and fears."
"Just us?" I asked.
"She's shown she knows how to disable powers," Trickster said. "If she did that on a larger scale, then-"
"No," Tattletale shook her head. "She wouldn't have used the dust and the darts if that was the big reveal. It doesn't make sense tactically, because we could have come up with a way to deal, and Skitter's partially immune anyways. And it doesn't make sense artistically, either. You have to think of her as less of a scientist or doctor and more of a performer."
A thirty story skyscraper tipped over and crashed to the ground in the distance. The rumbling crash of the building's collapse seemed delayed in getting to us. I could see Legend, more through the flashes of his lasers than anything else, but everyone else was out of sight, specks I couldn't have made out if they weren't on the ground.
"If we're lucky, we won't have to worry about Bonesaw's plot," Trickster said.
"Plan for the worst," Grue replied, staring into the distance, "If you're right, you're prepared. If you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised."

"Heard that one before," Imp commented.
"Still true," Grue replied, sounding annoyed.
"Can't plan for this," I said. "I'm growing to hate tinkers. People with enhanced senses and tinkers. And fire manipulators. Sorry,
Sundancer."
She shrugged.

Gosh, I just want to BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF Regent and Skitter for bullying Sundancer. First Regent almost called her a monster (despite Sundancer being an angel full of compassion and morals compared with him, a rapist and a sadist- are you sure you aren't the real monster here, Regent?+ Regent's power is downright SCARY compared with Sundancers. The ability to turn any person into "I have a mouth but I can't scream" > the ability to vaporize someone in few seconds, giving them a quick death). Then Skitter affirmed that she started to hate fire manipulators. Yes, I can agree with you, Skitter, about Lung and Burnscar, but what about Sundancer? She did nothing wrong. What about Spitfire? She's not a criminal. What about Legend? (lasers can start fires, ok?) He's one of the greatest heroes. Stop judging everyone because few people with similar power are evil. As for Tinkers, there are a lot of good Tinkers, Skitter: Armsmaster, Kid Win, Dragon (and by extension her creator Andrew). Hell, Alan aka Sphere was a man with a heart of gold and the best intentions in the world before Simurgh became jealous on his wife and kids. I think that even Bonesaw was a nice kid before she became classical Bonesaw. Plenty of Tinkers are good people and you have no right to judge them. What if someone will say that all Masters are evil and need to be eradicated? How would you like this?

I was right about Bonesaw not wanting to kill people with her virus. She's an artist, not a butcher.

I turned back to the subject at hand, "We can't guess what she's come up with because her tinker abilities make her so versatile, and that means we can't preemptively set up any countermeasures."

Tattletale tucked her hair behind her ear. "Fits in a vial, assuming that vial she was showing off was the real weapon, something to do with water, she said… you guys haven't been drinking anything except bottled water?"
There were head shakes and the occasional muttered "No" from the rest of the group.
"I've even been making my tea with it," I said.
"And we know there's going to be a strategic purpose behind it, beyond causing terror," Tattletale went on.
"You're getting into that headspace again, Tattletale," Grue said. "Tunnel vision."
"Right. I'm done now," Tattletale replied.
"Is it such a problem?" Trickster leaned forward, "If you can give us answers about this thing, that's good, right?"
Tattletale shook her head, "If I'm digging deep enough for answers that I'm losing sight of other things, it means I'm probably speculating, and that tends to mean I'm generating false positives, heading down the wrong path to the wrong conclusions. I told
Grue to stop me if I'm doing it, and Skitter's right when she says we can't anticipate what Bonesaw's going to do, so it's pointless anyways."
"If we did want to take countermeasures," I said, "We should maybe think about tracking down Amy. Or figuring out where she is."
"Panacea?" Grue frowned. "She didn't exactly leave us on good terms."
"I know. But she can counteract whatever Bonesaw does."
"Unless she falls victim to it," Tattletale said, sighing. "After two bad incidents downtown, I'd lay odds she's heading up toward the docks. It gives her the best odds of finding a place that's empty, where she and Glory Girl can hide out for-"

"Heads up!"
I wasn't sure who had shouted the warning, but I turned to look in the direction of the fighting, and I instantly knew it was Bonesaw's work.
The water was turning crimson. Where it was only one or two inches deep above the pavement, it turned a dark red that resembled blood. That alone might have been spooky enough, but it was spreading over hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds, and there was a thin red mist rising in its wake.
"Run!" Grue shouted.
I was on top of Atlas in an instant, and in the air a second later.
"How is it spreading so fast!?" I asked, while the others seated themselves on the two dogs.
"She must have set it up beforehand!" Tattletale called out. "Just needed the catalyst!"
She checked to make sure Trickster and Sundancer were seated and had Bentley at an all out run a heartbeat later. Sirius followed
just two steps behind, carrying Grue, Imp, Bitch and Ballistic. Regent joined me in the air, hanging in a less than dignified way
from Shatterbird's embrace.
I needed only one glance to know they weren't running fast enough.

Yes, Amy is the only one who can stop this madness, but right now she's busy with her sister, she's not in the right state of her mind and maybe she'd be affected too since she have no means to make herself immune at whatever this virus would do. Her power is useless on herself. Well, she can create the antidote and take it, but she should act fast otherwise she'd be too infested to think properly at countermeasures. Or at anything else besides murdering for the matter. So, the virus is spread through water, coloring it red and taking the form of a red mist. Scary shit, I was right that is going to be something dreadful. I'm not sure if the run or the flight can actually do something to protect them from being infested. Maybe if they can climb up the tallest buildings...but its very possible for the Red Mist to reach them there too.

"Sundancer!" I shouted. "Cut it off!"

It took her three or four seconds to pull an orb together, no larger than a basketball. It grew to twice the size as it flew, raking
across the street to turn the pooled water into clouds of steam. I rose higher in the air to avoid being caught by the plumes of hot
water. The steam turned from a clean white to pink and eventually red as the effect reached it.
Sundancer's miniature sun had slowed the progression down our flooded street, but it wasn't enough. From my perspective, I could
see the water on adjacent streets undergoing the same transformation, moving forward until it was adjacent to the others, then extending forward. It was a matter of time before it reached far enough forward that it passed through the side alleys and cut
them off.
"Get to high ground!" I shouted.
Bentley leaped for the side of a building in an alleyway, scrabbled for a hold, then leaped to the building face behind him, attempting the zig-zag movement that the dogs had done so many times before.
Except he wasn't as agile as the other dogs, and I suspected he wasn't as practiced at it as Brutus, Judas and Angelica had been. Added to that, he was carrying a heavy burden. One of his paws went through a window, he slipped, dug his claws into the wall and shifted to climbing the wall instead.
It was too slow. The water turned crimson beneath him, and then the vapor began to rise, faster than Bentley was climbing.
"Tattletale," I breathed.
I massed thick clusters of bugs between them and the vapor, while Regent and Shatterbird followed Sirius and the others.
It was enough to buy them time, but that meant precious little. No matter how much I pressed the bugs together into an airborne barrier, the vapor made its way through. Worse, the mist was rising to either side of them, approaching the top of the building.
They reached the rooftop and Bentley heaved himself over the edge. They hopped off his back as they reached solid ground, and
Tattletale stepped over to the corner of the roof to watch the rise of the red vapor. It was only a floor beneath them.
Trickster pointed at the top of a building nearby, then looked up at me.

I gathered my bugs there, again, pressing them together. Trickster looked increasingly impatient as the bugs massed, and the vapor reached the edges of the roof.
I hurried over to the building, instead, then hopped off, sending Atlas over to the other rooftop. Trickster swapped me with
Tattletale, and I hopped over to ferry myself to the roof again.
Didn't trust my ability to use Atlas to carry someone else, when I had to struggle to process his sensory inputs. Add someone else's shifting weight and movements, and I wasn't sure I wouldn't drop them.
I was on the building again when Trickster swapped me for Sundancer. It left him, myself and Bentley standing on the rooftop.
I was on top of Atlas a second later, flying. The red mist crept in from the outside edges of the rooftop. He got on top of Bentley, looking less than comfortable holding the reins, and Tattletale whistled. It wasn't as good as Bitch's whistles, but Bentley perked up and ran, leaping for the side of a nearby building.
He and Trickster reached the second rooftop quickly enough. The mist was still rising, not just below us, but up around buildings nearly as far as the eye could see.
"Shit," Tattletale said. "Not good."
"There's a taller building over there," I pointed. "We should head there before the mist gets up here."
"I'd call it miasma," Tattletale said. "And is there really any point?"
"It might stop rising," I protested.
"It won't."
"Is that an educated guess or-"

Gosh, this Chapter is already so damn suspenseful and unpredictable. I almost want someone to be infested by the Red Miasma just to see what the hell is actually doing. They're now on the top of the tallest buildings and the Red Miasma keeps rising without any care. I was sure that this strategy isn't going to work. I'm afraid that even Legend and Alexandria can be affected no matter how high they're flying. Well, if they fly as high as a passenger plane, maybe the miasma can't reach them but I won't be surprised if it can actually rise so high. Nothing surprise me anymore when it comes to Bonesaw's work.

"It's not."

I found myself at a loss for words.
"What does it do?" I asked. "Poison? Something else?"
"Probably something else. Or it's poison, but it's designed to do something besides kill us. How are the others doing?"
I looked for Grue and Regent using my swarm sense. Grue, Bitch, Ballistic and Sirius were on a rooftop lower than us, Regent directly above them. Cursory exploration with my bugs revealed a glass dome extending around the rooftop. My bugs could fit through gaps in the glass, which meant the miasma would as well. I did what I could to block up the holes, and I knew it was useless.
Brian. Rachel.
"I think they're caught," I said. "I-I don't know what to do."
"You have a gun. You have your bugs. If the Nine are going to let their guards down, it's going to be now. All the ones who are still left are priority targets. Finish off Siberian and taking Jack and Bonesaw out of action will be doable."
"You're saying I should leave you."
"Yeah." She looked down at the rising mist.
"No. That's ridiculous. Let's get you to higher ground."
"It's futile. You'd be buying us a little time, but this is looking pretty inevitable. Your time is better spent going after the Nine. If
you can't find them, or if it's too dangerous, find Panacea."
"This isn't negotiable. I- I can't do anything for Grue and Rachel and Ballistic, Regent tried and he failed. Let me do this for you."
Tattletale frowned. "Fine. But you'll have to hurry. That's a lot of distance to cover, and the miasma's nearly here."

Trickster cut in, "Gather bugs together like you were doing, remember that they're not as dense as our bodies are, so we need more than you'd think if I'm going to swap them for one of us."
I nodded and flew for the tallest building in the area. I turned around and waited for Trickster to swap me.
He didn't. They stood at the roof's edge, looking my way, and the dark red miasma climbed up the sides of the building around them.
It felt like my heart dropped out of my chest. Brian, Rachel, now Lisa?
I couldn't afford to turn around and confront them -time was too short- so I focused on gathering my bugs. I clustered them together, pressing them into a largish human shape. How many was enough?
I felt a jarring sensation as Trickster swapped my bugs to his location. Sundancer appeared beside me.
"Why?" I asked.
She shook her head, "They didn't say anything. They were both really quiet while you flew off, and then Tattletale said 'It doesn't look like her plan will work out. Tell her I'm sorry.' Trickster teleported me here before I could say anything or ask what she meant."
"Why isn't he telporting Tattletale out? Or himself? There's still time for…" I looked at the cloud. Not enough time to save both, now. "He could save oneof them, and I could probably get Atlas there and get out of harm's way before the miasma reached me."
"His power gets slower with distance and difference in mass," Sundancer hugged herself, "Maybe it's too slow, and he doesn't think you'd have time to run. Or-"
"Or." I said. The sentence didn't deserve to be finished. There was the otherreason. The notion that he was deliberately avoiding using his power, because he knew I didn't have the time to get back to them before the miasma reached them. "Are you going to be okay?"
"I don't know. When you've left, I'll use my power, and I guess I'll wait here until-" she stopped.
Until when? There was nothing saying this miasma of Bonesaw's would disappear or settle anytime soon.

..........Everyone is already infested except for Skitter and Sundancer. Tattletale is alone with Trickster. This is bad...this is already Apocalypse on the scale of how bad it is. Trickster can kill Tattletale anytime before she'll make a move against him. Yes, she have her gun but Trickster can swap her with a piece of building in the same shape and size as her and trap her there and let her to die a painful death. Or he can simply beat her to death -she's not very good at hand to hand combat and Trickster have more experience in fights than her. Or push her off the building. I worry for Tattletale in the company of a super-crazy powerful parahuman. Yes, she'd be crazy too but she can't win in a one-to-one fight against Trickster. Let's be realistic. Skitter, leave Sundancer alone and go and find the only person who can stop this red shit. HURRY UP!!!

"I hate being alone," Sundancer said. She settled into a sitting position. "It's like, I can count on one hand the number of times

I've actually been on my own. When I was little, I was always with my mom, or always in school, always in afterschool activities. Ballet, violin, lyrical dance, voice lessons, acting lessons… never a moment to think for myself. Even after I stopped all that, I was with my friends. Always in a group."
I stared at Tattletale and Trickster. I couldn't make out their faces, but my bugs could make out the shapes of sounds that had to be words. They were having a conversation, just like we were.
"I remember you said it was lonely, being in the Travelers."
"It was. It is. But I was still with them. Part of the group. The time I've spent in my territory is the longest I've spent on my own. Actually managing the territory, scaring off Hookwolf's people, that was easy. Being all on my own was unfamiliar ground. Soul crushing. I wound up going back to Coil's base and spending time with Noelle and Oliver. I didn't even really like them, before all this began. But being alone, agonizing over everything that's been going on, no distractions…"
The miasma had reached the rooftop where Tattletale and Trickster stood. Trickster was pacing, while Tattletale stood with her back to me, her hand rubbing Bentley's blunted snout.
It took only a few seconds for the mist to close in around them. There was no immediate reaction. The two teenagers and the dog simply stood, silhouettes in a stirring cloud of vapor that ranged from ruby-red to crimson in shade.
I swallowed past the growing lump in my throat.
"And now I'm alone," Sundancer said. "You're going to go after the Nine, and I'll wait here, all on my own, going crazy as I wait and watch and see just what happens to them."
"If I've picked up on anything over the last few months of wearing a costume, it's that humans are stronger than you'd expect," I said. It was as much to myself as to Sundancer. "We can endure a hell of a lot of punishment before we break, and even after we're broken, we tend to keep on going. Could be physical punishment: getting stabbed, getting scarred, broken bones. Could be mental: losing a loved one, being tortured, even the way I feel like breaking down and crying over the fact that just about every other member of my team is probably fucked, but I'm holding myself together? Humans can put up with a hell of a lot."
"I don't think this is the right time for optimism," Sundancer said, bitter.
"Optimism?" I shook my head. "No. It's a double-edged sword. If we weren't so resilient, so tenacious as a species, I don't think we'd be having this much trouble with Jack. I don't think Mannequin or Siberian would even exist like they do now. I'd almost call it pessimistic. Almost."
She didn't reply.

"Speaking of Jack and Siberian-" I started.
"Go."
I left, taking off and heading for the spot I'd left Legend. Looking over my shoulder, I could see Sundancer creating her orb and bringing it down on top of herself. As it had done back during our fight with Lung, it didn't burn the area directly around her.
And Tattletale and Trickster… were still standing in the midst of the miasma. They weren't reacting or doing anything, but they weren't signalling for me to come back, either, and they weren't hopping on top of Bentley to rejoin the action.
Something was up, I just had no idea what.
I consoled myself with the bittersweet idea that Bonesaw would want to draw this out. It wouldn't be as simple as murdering my teammates. It wasn't exactly reassuring, especially when I thought back to what had happened to Brian, but it gave me hope that this wasn't the last time I'd see my teammates. My friends.
I rose higher as I approached the epicenter of the miasma. It had continued to rise, and the place she'd used the catalyst was the place where the vapor had spread the most. I could see how it was threaded through the streets like veins, surrounding buildings in
a crimson embrace, spilling out into the ocean.
The water of the bay, I noticed, hadn't changed. Was the salt killing whatever organisms she'd designed to spread this effect?
There were areas of high ground where the effect was diminished or gone. There were hills here and there where the area hadn't flooded and miasma wasn't reaching so far into those spots. Hopefully that meant the civilians wouldn't be so affected; the high ground where flooding wasn't an issue would also be the place where people congregated for shelter.

No, Skitter, I personally don't agree with you here. No all people who went through trauma are strong and brave and they can face it with success but continuing to be themselves or even better persons. Alan was a very weak human being in the end, he lost his family and his work and instead of finding ways to give people the possibility to defeat Simurgh and stop her from ruining other lives, then start his work from scratch and maybe have another family, he decided that it was much better to hide from everyone inside a hard shell, to give up at everything that made him human and to start his personal war against humanity. Mr Voyeur decided (after whatever happened to his daughter or wife) to create a projection and use her to punish innocent people for his trauma. Whatever happened with Jack, he wouldn't become such a sicko asshole if he was strong and resilient enough. In my opinion, people who are really strong and brave and ready to face everything that their lives are throwing in their ways are people like Skitter, Miss Militia, Armsmaster, Grue, even Bitch. Yes, they can change and they can become more dark and twisted versions of themselves but they never lose their heart, their morals and the ideals they fight for. Even in real life not every traumatized individual become terrorist or serial killer. Only the weakest and most pathetic ones. Now I understand why Marissa called herself Sundancer better. Sun because of her power and dancer because of her hobby. She liked and practiced ballet, she had some very elegant hobbies.

A series of bright flashes caught my attention. Between the distance and the cloud of red vapor, I could only barely make him out, but the staccato lasers let me identify him as Legend. He was fighting.

I sent my bugs down into the miasma, drawing them together into a swarm and placing them strategically, painting a mental picture of the area, the layout, and the positions of the combatants.
Just to be safe, I drew closer to a rooftop. It wasn't safe to land, but I had hopes the building would offer me some cover against Jack. I held the bulk of my swarm at bay, waiting for the moment I could assist Legend in fighting the Nine.
He wasn't fighting the Nine.
Legend was shooting at teammates. He shouted something, but neither my ears nor my bugs were able to pick out the words.
Really wished I could use my bugs to hear.
Had they gone berserk? Rage?
No. I could sense others hiding. In fact, it seemed to be the primary concern of the people in the miasma. Hiding, staying out of trouble, putting distance between themselves and the others. Even Legend was pulling his punches. His lasers were nonlethal, as far as I could see.
Paranoia?
Weld, who I identified by his lack of a costume and the metal growths on his shoulders, was standing with his back to a wall. His hands were blunt weapons, and he was swinging them through the air to threaten anyone who approached. A small figure who could only be Vista was backing away from two adults. She got too close to Legend, and he fired a spray of laser blasts at her. None hurt her or penetrated her costume, but she staggered and fell.
I could sense the ground bulge, spearing up in a pillar. As the ground beneath them stretched in the pillar's vicinity, others staggered or got disoriented. At the pillar's top, a roughed-up Vista bent the growth she'd created to place herself close to the rooftop and hopped down onto solid ground. She coughed.
Okay, at least she wasn't someone who could kill me if this went the wrong way. I called out, "Vista!"
\She whirled on the spot to look at me, then swiftly began backing away.

I raised my hands to show her I meant no harm, "Hold on! I'm safe!"
"That's just what they would say!" She retorted.
They?
"Who? The Nine? In what universe would I be a member of the Nine?"
"Shut up! Don't try to convince me! Just… just back off! Leave me alone until all this stops!"
She was breathing so hard I could see her shoulders rising and falling through the protective suit she wore.
A thought struck me. It was working through the suit? The mask had to have filters for smoke, why hadn't it worked against this
miasma?
"I just want to help."
"Leave!"
She used her power, extending the pillar she had used to ascend to the rooftop. It missed me by a wide margin, but the threat was
clear enough.
I regretted it the instant I did it, but I moved forward to avoid any further movements from the shaft of asphalt. If I was going to
fall, I wanted to land on the roof, instead of the alleyway a dozen stories below.
"No!" The word was as much a scream as anything else. She extended the shaft well over my head and then pinched it off so the top part fell.
I'd seen her fight Leviathan, and she'd done the same thing then, if on a somewhat bigger scale. I had Atlas carry me out of the way and watched the teardrop shaped piece of asphalt crash to the floor of the alley.

Heroes are fighting against each other as I predicted that is going to happen. But they're not batshit insane and they doesn't purposely want to kill/eat each other (given the fact that Legend is not using his murderous lasers and Vista warns Skitter to leave) so they still have their same personalities and morals, they're more like.....paranoiacs? Like they have....amnesia and they don't remember who's who? So, the Rest Miasma makes them amnesiacs? Alright, this is not so bad as becoming murderous cannibals but is not good either. They might even end up trying to kill each others since they don't trust each other and usually the paranoia is growing especially if its powered by a biological weapon. This Chapter....I don't like this Chapter too much because I'm kind of a paranoiac person myself, I don't trust people and this Chapter doesn't help me at all with my paranoia.

I don't blame heroes for their aggressive fights. I perfectly understand them. If I were there I'd have attacked anyone who'd come close to me, I wouldn't even restrain myself. FUCK YOU, BONESAW!

That, apparently, was enough to get Legend's attention. He rose from the street level and surveyed the scene. He'd taken off the hazmat-style mask and filter, and what little I could see of his expression was drawn. His eyes were narrowed, a vein stood out on his forehead, and he furtively looked from Vista to me and back again.

"Legend," I started. How was I supposed to address him when he was like this? When I didn't even know what was going on with them?
Not that it mattered. He raised one hand in my direction, and I veered away, taking evasive maneuvers. It missed me by a foot, circled around and struck me off of Atlas before I could cancel out his momentum and change direction.
Legend had clearly set his lasers to 'stun', but it still hurt. Hitting the rooftop hurt more. I could feel a piece of armor crack beneath my weight, hear my things spilling to the ground.

I coughed out half a lungful of air and involuntarily sucked in another breath to cough again. It was humid, tasting slightly off, almost stagnant.
When I opened my eyes, I was seeing red, and not in the metaphorical sense. I was in the midst of the miasma.
Still coughing, I struggled to my feet. The back compartment of my armor had cracked as my weight had come down on the lip of the roof. My weapons, the epipens, the cell phone and the changepurse lay on the ground.
"Stay down!" the junior heroine screamed.
If I hadn't still been reeling from my fall, I might have been able to avoid it. As it was, the section of rooftop behind me bulged up into a wall and then folded down over on top of me. It bent to accommodate my shape rather than crush me, leaving only my head and shoulders sticking out.
"If you try that trick on me, little girl, I'll shoot you," I heard the threat from the air above us.
This was going south, fast.
"I'm going to turn my back and run," she responded. "If you try shooting me in the back, I'll show you what I can really do."
There was anger in the threat that caught me off guard. Was it this miasma that had pushed her to that level of anger? I wasn't feeling anything like that. Had something about the way he had talked provoked her? Or was that the norm for her?
I tried to think back to my prior experiences with her and found nothing.
What was her name?
Was I suffering from brain damage? Another concussion?
I did a series of multiplication, addition and subtraction in my head and found no problems on that front. Not general brain
damage, apparently.
Amnesia?
My name is Skitter, I thought, Taylor Anne Hebert. Sixteen. Born in Brockton Bay. Student at Winslow High. Ex-student. Member of the Undersiders.
No problems on that front.
My line of thought continued absently, as if I wanted to reassure myself that I was mentally intact. My parents are Dan Hebert and Annette Rose Hebert.
I struggled, wiggling to try and free myself from the hump of solid concrete. I could inch myself out.
What would my mom think to see me now?
I tried to picture her expression.
Again, that gap, the chasm. Nothing.

I could have been hit by five more of those laser blasts on 'stun' and it wouldn't have hit me as hard as the realization that I couldn't remember my mother. Couldn't remember her face, the details, her mannerisms. Even the happy memories we'd shared, the little moments I'd clung to over the past two years, they were gone. There was only an empty void where they should have been.

I couldn't remember my dad, either.

Wait a minute...this is NOT amnesia. Skitter (now infested as well) can remember her name, the name of her parents but she can't remember her parents' faces/mannerisms and Vista's face/name. This is more like....how the loss of the ability to remember faces, objects, people, is called? Agnosia, yes, its called agnosia. I read about and I watched a movie with the same title where the main character had the same affection, however exaggerated. So, everyone is suffering from agnosia and hey can't remember each other's faces and names, believing to be enemies. And now Skitter is affected too. Great, just great. If she'll escape from that section of rooftop that Vista folded over her, she should NOT trust anyone. No matter if they pretend they're her friends. I'm not going to trust anyone either if you ask me.

The other Undersiders, their faces, their costumes, their personalities and mannerisms, all gone. I could remember what we'd done: the bank robbery, fighting Purity's group, lazing around in the old loft, even the general progression of events from the moment I'd met them. But the people were blanks waiting to be filled in, and I couldn't go from thinking about one name to thinking about the events that were related to it.

I felt a rising panic as I struggled to work myself free. I didn't know the people who were on the rooftop with me: the man who floated in the air, wearing a sturdy hazmat-style firesuit and a blue and silver mask that left only his mouth, chin and wavy brown hair exposed. I couldn't recognize the girl he was shooting in the back. I saw her fall face first and writhe with pain. He shot her two more times, and she went limp. Out cold.
I couldn't make the mental connection between the Nine and their appearances or their powers. If I didn't have the benefit of being able to remember my actions over the past few minutes, it would have been impossible to say whether the two people here were allies or enemies.
Everything suddenly made sense. The infighting, the tactics they were using, the mixture of hostility and paranoia. Legend was attacking with nonlethal blasts because he couldn't be sure if he was attacking a teammate or one of the Nine, so he was striving to take everyone out of action with as little permanent damage as possible.

Sundancer's worries about being alone struck me. We were all alone, now. Every single one of us. From teams to individuals, everyone was fending for themselves because they couldn't afford to trust the others.
And it would ruin us.
It would be impossible to mount any kind of defense against the Nine if we were fighting them as individuals.
The man with the blue and silver mask floated over to where I was, ready to dispatch me, to knock me out, just in case I was a threat.
"Help?" I called out. It was a spur of the moment response. My mind raced as I tried to form a plan. Even a bad one would serve. I lied, "I'm stuck. Break me out?"
I stared up at him. His face was riddled with conflicting emotions, his body language tense. There was a nervousness there that belied simple amnesia.
We'd been warned about drinking the city's water. It might mean the effects were more pronounced for the people who hadn't been informed. Or there might be side effects.
"Stay," he ordered.
He stayed at the level of the rooftop as he floated out above the street, aiming more blasts at the others.
This wasn't rational for him, it didn't jibe with my knowledge of him. That could mean there was something about the miasma that was making him irrational.
I waited for long minutes as he continued firing down on the others. He cast me one sidelong glance, then flew off in pursuit of someone I couldn't see.
Even after I was able to start wiggling myself free, it was slow. I measured my progress in half-inches. My chest, small as it was, proved an issue. Coupled with the armor at my front and the remains of the armor at my back, it made getting free an issue. Several times, I stopped breathing for a good minute
before I forced myself back under the concrete sheet to be able to breathe again, then I did it again. As much through the wear and tear on my armor as anything else, I managed to slide my upper body out on the fifth attempt. I took a second to breathe and rest, and then began the slow process of getting my midsection and hips past the mouth of the concrete shelf.
I directed every curse word I knew at the belt and armor panels I'd placed around my hips as I tried to work myself free. My hips and rear end were proving as difficult as my chest had been, and with my upper body being further away, I couldn't get the same leverage push myself out with my arms. Minutes passed as I grunted and struggled. I could hear inarticulate screams, shouted threats, screamed warnings and the noise of destruction on the street below as paranoia gave way to violence. I brought Atlas to my side, but even with his strength and his horn, he wasn't strong enough to affect the concrete. I used his help to squeeze myself out, bracing his horn against the lip of the concrete sheet and pulling.
When I was free, I gathered my knife, baton and gun from where they had fallen and fit them into the few remaining elastic loops in my ruined utility compartment. Cell phone was a yes, but I didn't have a spot for it, so I tucked it in the chest compartment of my armor. Similarly, I stuck the epipens and changepurse through the space between my hip and the belt, wedging them in next to the straps.
I double checked that Atlas hadn't been hurt by Legend's lasers and then climbed on top of him.
There was destruction below, and signs of the mad fighting between capes. Sheets of paper frozen in time, a mailbox destroyed, a light-post toppled, all still in the midst of the red water. Everyone had fled or been knocked out of commission. The fighting had migrated to several scattered spots nearby.

Looks like Skitter doesn't know about agnosia. Ok, I don't blame her, not everyone knows. She managed to free herself from the folded rooftop and she's going to find Amy....But how she can find Amy if she can't remember her name and her face? I'm afraid that she might meet someone like Siberian or even worse, Bonesaw, who'll pretend that they're one of her teammates/Travelers in order to win Skitter's trust and to find Amy together (then to have her killed because her recruitment failed). Skitter would be stupid to trust anyone but herself but in order for this Chapter/rest of the Arc to be even more scary than it is already, I think she'd be naive enough to trust any bitch who will manipulate her.

The good thing is that Atlas is not affected and possible neither the dogs. This shit works only to humans.

I didn't know exactly what to do, so I focused on helping the wounded, making sure they were okay. I turned an unconscious girl over into the recovery position, and started to drag a wounded man out of the middle of the road. I stopped when he started struggling and fighting with me and just left him there.

I felt lost. Was I helping the enemy when I was propping someone up to make sure they didn't choke on their own vomit or drown in a puddle? If I used the plastic cuffs I had in the changepurse, would I be tying someone up, leaving them helpless against one of the Nine?
I checked my cell phone. No service.
I was alone here. Everyone in the world was a stranger.
Vibrations rocked the street. I saw the wounded man stir in response.
A monster. Bigger than a car, fangs, teeth, claws, and a thorny exterior. It didn't act like it had seen me.
One of Bitch's dogs? Or is it Crawler?
If it was Crawler, and I acted like he was friendly, he'd tear me to shreds. I could draw my gun to threaten him, defend myself… except that wouldn't do a thing to slow Crawler down.
If it was one of Bitch's dogs sans rider, then there was little point in staying. I didn't even know if it was suffering from the miasma's effect. If it was
Crawler…
I drew my bugs around me as a shroud, simultaneously forming decoy swarms. I ran, my footsteps splashing, and called Atlas to me. The second I was out of sight, I climbed on top of him and took to the air once again.
Couldn't settle down, couldn't stop. I had to treat everyone I met as an enemy.
I was beginning to see where the paranoia came in.
"Skitter!" a voice called out.
I stopped.

A blond girl, waving at me.
I drew my gun and leveled it at her.
The smile dropped from her face. She brought both hands to her mouth as she shouted, "It's me! Tattletale!"
I hesitated.
How tragic would it be if I shot my friend, so soon after I'd wanted to scream at the heroes for fighting among one another?
"How did you get here?"
"On the dog. I don't remember its name, but it wasn't as affected as we were. This effect is tailored for people."
I looked in the direction of the creature I'd seen. Had that been the dog they'd come on?
I drew closer, but I kept the gun aimed at her. I glanced around. "Where are the others?"
"Most are hiding," she said. "My powers kind of let me work around this gas, I think. I brought Grue, too."
I looked around. What she was saying felt right, even if I couldn't remember her powers, specifically. "What is this? Amnesia?"
"Agnosia. We haven't forgotten. Just… can't use the knowledge we have. Looking at the others, I think they're hallucinating. If it's prions, like Bonesaw used with the power nullification darts, it fits. Hallucinations would match with heavy prion exposure."
"Prions?"
"They're small enough to pass through water filtration and gas masks. Badly folded proteins that force other proteins into identical shapes, perpetuating the problem. If she found a way to guide them, or specifically target the parts of the brain she wanted, she might get results like we're experiencing. In a really bad case, it'd cause lesions in the brain and give you hallucinations."

I can bet on everything you want, my friends, that dog is actually Crawler and he doesn't attack her because....this "Tattletale" ordered him to let Skitter alone. This "Tattletale" who's NOT Tattletale. She doesn't talk like Tattletale I know and I love, she knows too much about this mutated agnosia (agnosia confirmed. I'm good. I'm fucking good

) details that Tattletale won't know about despite her uber-intuition. Fucking Bonesaw (who's also a blond little piece of shit) playing mind games with poor Skitter. You don't fool me, Bonesaw. Maybe you fooled Grue and you're going to fool Skitter, but not me.

I looked around. "How long does it last?"

"Forever. It's incurable and it's terminal."
I swallowed. "But Panacea could fix it."
She nodded, then smiled wide. "There's hope, right?"
"Right."
She jerked her head to one side, then used one hand to brush the hair back out of her face. "Let's grab Grue and formulate a plan."
She turned to leave, but I stayed where I was. After three steps, she turned around. "What's wrong?"
I didn't lower the gun. "Sorry, a little paranoid."
She frowned. "That's fair, but we're short on time. If others are getting lesions on their brain, then that means they could die soon. Seizures, violent mood swings, loss of motor control… Creutzfeldt-Jakob was a prion disease, but the progression here's faster."
I shook my head. "Crews-what?"
"Neurological disorder caused by eating the meat of a cow infected with mad cow disease. You get the prions in your head, and you slowly die while suffering personality changes, memory loss and vivid hallucinations."
"And it's faster here."
She nodded. Her expression was solemn. "Hours instead of weeks. And as people experience mood shifts with anger and fear, or if the hallucinations get worse-"

"The fighting among teammates will, too," I finished. "It could get ugly."
"If we're going to save everyone, we need Amy. For that, we need to ask Cherish."
I shook my head. "Who?"
"Um. You remember capturing a member of the Nine?"
Did I? We'd ambushed them, walked away with captives, yes. But we'd lost someone too.
"Yeah," I replied.
"And we confined one?"
I nodded. This was working. I could piece together the information. We'd called that person on a phone, hadn't we? "Cell phones aren't working
consistently."
"Is it safe?" a male voice asked.
"Sure."
I stayed silent.
He stepped out from around the corner to stand by the blond girl. "This is Skitter?"
She nodded. "Skitter, this is Grue."
I didn't recognize him any more than he recognized me. I kept the gun trained on them.
"This is slowing us down. What's it going to take to get you to trust me?" she asked.
What would it take?
"The fight with Empire Eighty-Eight's mooks. When I made the human-shaped tower of bugs for the first time, and they shot into it while I crouched inside…"
She shook her head "I don't remember that."
How many people had I been with, then? I would have said one, but I felt like someone else was involved. Had they arrived late? I could remember hurrying off.
She spread her arms wide. "I'm sorry. I might not look like it, but it's affecting me too. I'm just using my power to uncover the answers we need."
I nodded. That would have been reassuring if I could remember what her powers were, or if I could think of something about her I could quiz her on. It was like two blind people playing hide and seek.
"Look, come here," she offered.
I hesitated.
"You can keep the gun. I'll keep my hands above my head. Grue, stand back."
He stepped away and leaned against a wall, his arms folded.
I landed Atlas and stepped forward.
She got on her knees, and with her hands above her head, she walked through the flooded street on her knees until her forehead was pressed against the barrel of the gun.
"I trust you. I know I'm a pain in the ass sometimes, I know we've had our ups and downs. I know I've kept way too many secrets for someone who calls herself Tattletale…" She smiled. "But I trust you. Now, even if you don't recognize me consciously, what's your heart telling you?"
In truth? It wasn't telling me much. If I didn't think on it, if I just went with the vague impression I associated with the name Tattletale, the smile, the fountain of information…
I backed away a step. "I don't think that's a good enough reason to trust you."
"Darn it. Um. Let me think…"

I WOULD HAVE SHOT HER RIGHT IN HER FOREHEAD. I know about agnosia, I'd have noticed the fact that this "Tattletale" knows too many medical terms about a mutated agnosia, that this "Tattletale" doesn't remember some important events (despite agnosia affecting only faces, mannerisms and names, not the memories) that this "Tattletale" is using me to find Amy. Skitter, either shoot her or fucking run away. And take Grue away with you because I don't want him to stay not even for a couple of minutes in the company of the little bitch who turned him literally inside out and now is messing with his mind. Don't be so naive, please, don't disappoint me. The same thing I can say about Grue too but Skitter is usually a smarter and less trustful person than him.

"Do you want to go ahead without her?" the guy asked.

I turned to look at him. The idea of being left alone here-
"Go somewhere safe," he suggested.
I frowned.
"If the Slaughterhouse Nine find Panacea first, or if things get much worse-"
"I want to help, really," I said. "But it's just that…"
I trailed off.
"You want to help, but you're suspicious. And you feel bad for being suspicious, because of everything we've been through, our close calls?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. I was double checking everything he said against my own awareness. Was he saying anything that indicated he knew something I couldn't?
"I know how scared and suspicious you feel because I feel the same way. Except I trust Tattletale."
"I do too," I said, "And I'd trust her if I could be sure she was Tattletale."
"Trust your heart."
I wanted so desperately for it to be like in the movies, where people could trust your heart. Where you were holding the gun and you had to choose between shooting the evil clone and shooting your friend, and you just knew.
He gestured around us with one hand. "This doesn't work. This is going to lose us the fight, and all the danger we've been through in our fight against the
Nine will be for nothing if they win here."
I shook my head. "I don't disagree, but that line of thinking isn't going to make me drop the gun."

"Then can I try acting from my heart?" he asked.
Before I could respond, he started approaching me. I backed away a step, kept the gun leveled, but I couldn't bring myself to shoot as he advanced.
He stepped in close, ignoring the gun, and wrapped his arms around me. My forehead pressed against his shoulder. It wasn't the most comfortable hug I'd
had, not that I'd had many. It felt awkward, stiff, clumsy. But somehow that made it feel more right, like a real hug would have felt off somehow.
He was warm.
Grue?
Then, without waiting for me to give an answer, Grue stepped back, taking hold of my left hand and pulling. I followed without complaint. I couldn't complain. If I doubted him now, after this- I'd be ten times as angry at myself as he was with me.
"Priority number one, we get in contact with Cherish," Tattletale said, grinning. "From there, we can decide whether we want to track down Panacea or go after the Slaughterhouse Nine."
"Right," I said.
"Keep checking your cell phone. The second we have service, call Coil."
"Coil is?"
"Our boss, and since he's hidden away, he won't be affected, so he'll be able to place the name and fill us in on the details the agnosia has blocked from us."
"Okay."
"It's not the end of the world after all," Tattletale smiled.
I nodded. I was acutely aware of the gun in my right hand. I felt like I should put it away, but with the way we were moving and my general sense of unease, I couldn't stop and do it. Hated this. It reminded me of school.
The reminder made me angry, and it somehow made all of this seem worse. I muttered, "Sooner we're fucking cured of this miasma, the better."
"Hey!" Tattletale paused, pointing at me with a stern expression on her face. "Don't swear!"

"bangs her heads against her desk few times" Gosh, when someone will ask me again why I have problems with trusting people (both in reality and in fictional world) I'll ask them nice to read this part of this Arc, even if they never read Worm before. This is an example why is better to not be naive in life. I know that is not good how I'm acting either- some of my friends are bothered that I don't always trust them

and my mom always encouraged me to be more social (despite being a social person, I'm just very aware of people around me while keeping a trustful facade). This doesn't mean I don't trust my closest friends but if one of them would betray me once then...I'm just a complicated person, that's all.

Hard to be friends with me. I'm fucking insane. :lol Ok, so, yes, we know that you don't like when people swear, Bonesawtale. As for you, "Grue" you're not Grue either, right? You fooled me for a bit while. Grue wouldn't talk like this and especially hug Skitter, when he's so shy with girls+ he's still traumatized. Congratulations, Skitter, you just hugged....Jack. I know he's handsome but still....At least you didn't kissed him "shivers". They want to kill Amy and punish Cherish and they use Skitter to reach them. JOY.

What a paranoiac Chapter (and the next ones, I suppose)!!! I bet that almost all the readers noticed who "Tattletale" and "Grue" were.

Good night and sleep well, friends.

ExNihilo · Jul 15, 2018

blackarrow said:
what about Sundancer? She did nothing wrong.

Indeed she didn't. Problem is, Fire is super-effective against Bug.

fabledFreeboota · Jul 16, 2018

blackarrow said:
I know he's handsome but still...

Jack's not really handsome. Or at least, no more handsome than Jonny Depp.

rafuki22 · Jul 16, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, wandering souls. Last time, I got the confirmation that mr Voyeur worked/is working for Cauldron (given the cauldron tattoo on his left hand) his real name is mister Cauldron, his ancestors were executed during Salem witch trials and he never received Hogwarts acceptance letter -because of everything mentioned he went crazy and decided to be as murderous and destructive as possible. Don't ask me how I know these information, I have my own ways to find them. Ok, S9 did what they promised they'll do in case of heroes' implication: contaminate the city with a virus. I want to be clear: I'll not blame heroes or Emily. Actually, I APPRECIATE what Emily did, I'd have done exactly the same. The only casualties were Glory Girl and Cache, no civilian injured during the bombardment (heroes not being civilians, but soldiers who fight for what is good and right), Mannequin and Crawler are possible dead (its a small possibility however and I'm expecting from time to time for any other them to appear, taking everyone by surprise. But if a single one actually died then Emily is a fucking hero, she just eliminated an absolute monster). I don't have any reason to judge Emily for what she did, anyway, nobody can guarantee me that S9 would have kept their word if heroes wouldn't have cheated. They're psychos, psychos doesn't usually keep their words or play honest. I think that no matter what Emily would have done, they'd have still released the virus. As for the virus, I don't think its something mortal because Bonesaw is an artist and she won't be pleased if she'll just kill everyone. She needs to be inventive, creative, to scare, terrorize people, not kill them. Or maybe make them kill each others by turning them into psychos with uncontrollable urges to kill. Or worse, the virus might affect only the parahumans, making them crazy enough to attack everything in their way. Imagine the heroes killing innocent people, imagine the heroes eating people even if they know what they're doing but they can't control themselves. Legend alone can kill half of heroes and villains. Imagine the heroes becoming normal again and seeing what they did.... That would be extremely destructive for their own minds, will fuck up forever the respect and admiration people have for them and will turn non-powered humans against parahumans, creating a rift between them that will never be fixed again. I can't see something worse than this. That would be your art, Bonesaw Prey 14.8

Gosh, I just want to BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF Regent and Skitter for bullying Sundancer. First Regent almost called her a monster (despite Sundancer being an angel full of compassion and morals compared with him, a rapist and a sadist- are you sure you aren't the real monster here, Regent?+ Regent's power is downright SCARY compared with Sundancers. The ability to turn any person into "I have a mouth but I can't scream" > the ability to vaporize someone in few seconds, giving them a quick death). Then Skitter affirmed that she started to hate fire manipulators. Yes, I can agree with you, Skitter, about Lung and Burnscar, but what about Sundancer? She did nothing wrong. What about Spitfire? She's not a criminal. What about Legend? (lasers can start fires, ok?) He's one of the greatest heroes. Stop judging everyone because few people with similar power are evil. As for Tinkers, there are a lot of good Tinkers, Skitter: Armsmaster, Kid Win, Dragon (and by extension her creator Andrew). Hell, Alan aka Sphere was a man with a heart of gold and the best intentions in the world before Simurgh became jealous on his wife and kids. I think that even Bonesaw was a nice kid before she became classical Bonesaw. Plenty of Tinkers are good people and you have no right to judge them. What if someone will say that all Masters are evil and need to be eradicated? How would you like this? I was right about Bonesaw not wanting to kill people with her virus. She's an artist, not a butcher.

Yes, Amy is the only one who can stop this madness, but right now she's busy with her sister, she's not in the right state of her mind and maybe she'd be affected too since she have no means to make herself immune at whatever this virus would do. Her power is useless on herself. Well, she can create the antidote and take it, but she should act fast otherwise she'd be too infested to think properly at countermeasures. Or at anything else besides murdering for the matter. So, the virus is spread through water, coloring it red and taking the form of a red mist. Scary shit, I was right that is going to be something dreadful. I'm not sure if the run or the flight can actually do something to protect them from being infested. Maybe if they can climb up the tallest buildings...but its very possible for the Red Mist to reach them there too.

Gosh, this Chapter is already so damn suspenseful and unpredictable. I almost want someone to be infested by the Red Miasma just to see what the hell is actually doing. They're now on the top of the tallest buildings and the Red Miasma keeps rising without any care. I was sure that this strategy isn't going to work. I'm afraid that even Legend and Alexandria can be affected no matter how high they're flying. Well, if they fly as high as a passenger plane, maybe the miasma can't reach them but I won't be surprised if it can actually rise so high. Nothing surprise me anymore when it comes to Bonesaw's work.

..........Everyone is already infested except for Skitter and Sundancer. Tattletale is alone with Trickster. This is bad...this is already Apocalypse on the scale of how bad it is. Trickster can kill Tattletale anytime before she'll make a move against him. Yes, she have her gun but Trickster can swap her with a piece of building in the same shape and size as her and trap her there and let her to die a painful death. Or he can simply beat her to death -she's not very good at hand to hand combat and Trickster have more experience in fights than her. Or push her off the building. I worry for Tattletale in the company of a super-crazy powerful parahuman. Yes, she'd be crazy too but she can't win in a one-to-one fight against Trickster. Let's be realistic. Skitter, leave Sundancer alone and go and find the only person who can stop this red shit. HURRY UP!!!

No, Skitter, I personally don't agree with you here. No all people who went through trauma are strong and brave and they can face it with success but continuing to be themselves or even better persons. Alan was a very weak human being in the end, he lost his family and his work and instead of finding ways to give people the possibility to defeat Simurgh and stop her from ruining other lives, then start his work from scratch and maybe have another family, he decided that it was much better to hide from everyone inside a hard shell, to give up at everything that made him human and to start his personal war against humanity. Mr Voyeur decided (after whatever happened to his daughter or wife) to create a projection and use her to punish innocent people for his trauma. Whatever happened with Jack, he wouldn't become such a sicko asshole if he was strong and resilient enough. In my opinion, people who are really strong and brave and ready to face everything that their lives are throwing in their ways are people like Skitter, Miss Militia, Armsmaster, Grue, even Bitch. Yes, they can change and they can become more dark and twisted versions of themselves but they never lose their heart, their morals and the ideals they fight for. Even in real life not every traumatized individual become terrorist or serial killer. Only the weakest and most pathetic ones. Now I understand why Marissa called herself Sundancer better. Sun because of her power and dancer because of her hobby. She liked and practiced ballet, she had some very elegant hobbies.

Heroes are fighting against each other as I predicted that is going to happen. But they're not batshit insane and they doesn't purposely want to kill/eat each other (given the fact that Legend is not using his murderous lasers and Vista warns Skitter to leave) so they still have their same personalities and morals, they're more like.....paranoiacs? Like they have....amnesia and they don't remember who's who? So, the Rest Miasma makes them amnesiacs? Alright, this is not so bad as becoming murderous cannibals but is not good either. They might even end up trying to kill each others since they don't trust each other and usually the paranoia is growing especially if its powered by a biological weapon. This Chapter....I don't like this Chapter too much because I'm kind of a paranoiac person myself, I don't trust people and this Chapter doesn't help me at all with my paranoia. I don't blame heroes for their aggressive fights. I perfectly understand them. If I were there I'd have attacked anyone who'd come close to me, I wouldn't even restrain myself. FUCK YOU, BONESAW!

Wait a minute...this is NOT amnesia. Skitter (now infested as well) can remember her name, the name of her parents but she can't remember her parents' faces/mannerisms and Vista's face/name. This is more like....how the loss of the ability to remember faces, objects, people, is called? Agnosia, yes, its called agnosia. I read about and I watched a movie with the same title where the main character had the same affection, however exaggerated. So, everyone is suffering from agnosia and hey can't remember each other's faces and names, believing to be enemies. And now Skitter is affected too. Great, just great. If she'll escape from that section of rooftop that Vista folded over her, she should NOT trust anyone. No matter if they pretend they're her friends. I'm not going to trust anyone either if you ask me.

Looks like Skitter doesn't know about agnosia. Ok, I don't blame her, not everyone knows. She managed to free herself from the folded rooftop and she's going to find Amy....But how she can find Amy if she can't remember her name and her face? I'm afraid that she might meet someone like Siberian or even worse, Bonesaw, who'll pretend that they're one of her teammates/Travelers in order to win Skitter's trust and to find Amy together (then to have her killed because her recruitment failed). Skitter would be stupid to trust anyone but herself but in order for this Chapter/rest of the Arc to be even more scary than it is already, I think she'd be naive enough to trust any bitch who will manipulate her. The good thing is that Atlas is not affected and possible neither the dogs. This shit works only to humans.

I can bet on everything you want, my friends, that dog is actually Crawler and he doesn't attack her because....this "Tattletale" ordered him to let Skitter alone. This "Tattletale" who's NOT Tattletale. She doesn't talk like Tattletale I know and I love, she knows too much about this mutated agnosia (agnosia confirmed. I'm good. I'm fucking good ) details that Tattletale won't know about despite her uber-intuition. Fucking Bonesaw (who's also a blond little piece of shit) playing mind games with poor Skitter. You don't fool me, Bonesaw. Maybe you fooled Grue and you're going to fool Skitter, but not me.

I WOULD HAVE SHOT HER RIGHT IN HER FOREHEAD. I know about agnosia, I'd have noticed the fact that this "Tattletale" knows too many medical terms about a mutated agnosia, that this "Tattletale" doesn't remember some important events (despite agnosia affecting only faces, mannerisms and names, not the memories) that this "Tattletale" is using me to find Amy. Skitter, either shoot her or fucking run away. And take Grue away with you because I don't want him to stay not even for a couple of minutes in the company of the little bitch who turned him literally inside out and now is messing with his mind. Don't be so naive, please, don't disappoint me. The same thing I can say about Grue too but Skitter is usually a smarter and less trustful person than him.

"bangs her heads against her desk few times" Gosh, when someone will ask me again why I have problems with trusting people (both in reality and in fictional world) I'll ask them nice to read this part of this Arc, even if they never read Worm before. This is an example why is better to not be naive in life. I know that is not good how I'm acting either- some of my friends are bothered that I don't always trust them and my mom always encouraged me to be more social (despite being a social person, I'm just very aware of people around me while keeping a trustful facade). This doesn't mean I don't trust my closest friends but if one of them would betray me once then...I'm just a complicated person, that's all. Hard to be friends with me. I'm fucking insane. :lol Ok, so, yes, we know that you don't like when people swear, Bonesawtale. As for you, "Grue" you're not Grue either, right? You fooled me for a bit while. Grue wouldn't talk like this and especially hug Skitter, when he's so shy with girls+ he's still traumatized. Congratulations, Skitter, you just hugged....Jack. I know he's handsome but still....At least you didn't kissed him "shivers". They want to kill Amy and punish Cherish and they use Skitter to reach them. JOY.

What a paranoiac Chapter (and the next ones, I suppose)!!! I bet that almost all the readers noticed who "Tattletale" and "Grue" were.

Good night and sleep well, friends.

You know blacksparrow, I do not like agnosia or anything related to biological, physical, mental, emotional manipulation, etc ... It makes me weak in my body, having to lie down because of how uncomfortable I feel when reading something similar, which is strange because I have read and seen worse things, ... or maybe it was just a drop of sugar.

Edit: I do not like to be limited, or, to limit.
Editx2: Also, it is not paranoia when someone wants to kill you for real, or worse things.

blackarrow · Jul 16, 2018

Hi, distant memories of my friends. Alright, I'm going to continue this part of this Arc that I HATE. I seriously hate the whole agnosia attack, because it plays HARD with my own paranoia and trust issues. I hope its going to end very soon, it isn't enjoyable at all for me

This and every Chapter were Mannequin appeared/will appear (with the exception of the Chapters where he got his shell ass kicked

) Ok, I'm gonna call Bonesaw and Jack as "Tattletale" and "Grue" until Skitter will figure out who they really are then I'll switch using their names. Still can't believe that Skitter is willing to trust two people that is very clear they're not her friends. I mean, I understand that she can't remember names, faces, habits and mannerisms, but she didn't noticed when "Tattletale" said that she doesn't remember some of their past battles (agnosia doesn't affect memories about past events)? She didn't noticed when "Grue" was so eager to hug her, despite being so traumatized and having such a hard time to get close to people again, including his friends? Come on, Skitter, its obvious that something is WRONG with these two, you're smart girl, you can't trust so easy any stranger who come to you and tell you that they're someone you know. And do you know what is worse? That the "dog" wandering around might be Crawler. If he was one of the Bitch's dogs, then he'd have recognize Skitter by scent and came to her. Crawler, you don't fool anyone, except for poor Skitter. Now imagine if Skitter will meet a random bystander, a very tall, very pale and creepy looking one. She'd be like...
Skitter: Why this guy doesn't talk?
"Tattletale": I know, I know. Its my power. I know everything. He can't talk because he's a mute hero. This is the truth, never doubt it.
Skitter: But....why he doesn't have a visible mouth and eyes?
"Tattletale": I know. Agnosia....hallucinations. You're hallucinating.
Skitter: I don't know. He also look like a mannequin. He reminds me of someone. Fuck....I don't remember.
"Tattletale": Hallucinations, as I said. Don't swear, please.
The "mute hero" proceeds to turn his arm into a chainsaw, signaling in morse code to Skitter: -Payback bitch. For humiliating me two times- then he cuts a dumbfounded Skitter in half. End of Worm. The rest of the Chapters are actually blank pages.

Alright, now that I got a little more courage thanks to my stupid jokes, let's continue Prey 14.9

"Your powers are working alright?" Tattletale asked.
I nodded.
"Bug powers, was it? Don't want to get it wrong. Control them, see through their eyes-"
"No. I can't see through their eyes or hear what they do. It's mainly touch."
"Just wanted to check." She paused. "If I asked you what my power was?"
I shook my head.
"Okay. And if I said I was born in Mexico, could you tell me where I was born?"
"Didn't you just say?"
"Yeah. Repeat it back to me?"
"You were born in Mexico?"
"Your short-term recollection is still good, at least. That would be why you can retain the information Grue and I have shared over the past few minutes.
That big beetle of yours, you named it?"
I glanced at Atlas, who was crawling a short distance away. "Atlas."
Tattletale nodded. "That would be the short-term memory, again. Your power probably gives you enough contact with it that you don't lose track of who and what it is."
"Right."
"So long as that keeps working, we don't need to worry about you and Grue forgetting who we are in the middle of a conversation. But for us, we might lose track of each other if we split up, so let's stay close, okay?"
"Okay."
She reached out and took my hand.
"Can you use the bugs to scout our surroundings? This will go more smoothly if we don't need to worry about running into people."
It made sense. I sent my bugs out to cover the surrounding area.
The red mist was everywhere. Color was strained out, leaving everything a monochrome red. I could still make out the surroundings, but just enough light was filtered out that the area had settled into an oppressive gloom, with many existing shadows made nearly opaque as a result. The drifting movements of the mist and the subtle shifts in color and shadow made me feel like things were prowling in every corner and in the edges of my field of vision.

That deep, primal prey-animal part of my psyche kept telling me something was wrong, that I was in danger. I tried to tell myself that it was just my fear working itself up, my brain playing tricks on me. There was nothing out there.
The weight of the gun in my hand was both a reassurance and a burden. It would be so easy to do something I would regret for the rest of my life.
"Hate this," I muttered.
"Me too," Grue answered. He put his hand on my shoulder to offer some reassurance. "But we manage, we cope because we're a team. We belongtogether."
My awareness snagged on someone who was walking a distance behind us, measuring their pace with ours.

Ok, now I'm wondering where mr Voyeur is. He must hide somewhere and I think they made him immune too. Yes, he's blind and he can't see faces but he still can have troubles with remembering names without immunity. I mean, imagine Bonesaw forgetting to make him immune, telling herself that if he's blind then everything is ok.
Bonesaw: Hey, mr....
Mr Voyeur: I'm afraid I don't recognize your voice. Who are you?
Bonesaw: I'm Bonesaw and this is Jack, we're your teammates.
Mr Voyeur: I don't recognize these names. I don't trust you. You want to hurt me, you're enemies pretending to know me. I'm not stupid. I worked with the brightest minds.
Bonesaw: But...."quickly Siberian materializes in front of her and Jack, proceeding to eat both of them".
Ladies and gentlemen, the consequences of underestimating blind people.

"We may need to stand together as a team sooner than later," I said. "We're being followed."
"By who?" Tattletale asked. She paused, then laughed. "Silly question, I guess."
"Tie them up?" she suggested.
"Right."
My bugs gathered in out of the way spots, and the spiders began drawing out lines of silk in preparation. I didn't want to inform this person that I was on to their tail.
Then, just in case they decided to drop the tail and attack us, I began to gather bugs together into decoys. Human-shaped lumps and clusters of bugs gathered in alleys and at the edges of rooftops. Still more gathered in the street, standing in alcoves and in other hiding spots. I invested less bugs in the ones that were further away from our pursuer, trusting that the shadows the miasma cast would help round them out. There were no decoys our pursuer would see from where they stood, but there were now enough to give them pause.
Grue drifted away from our group to approach one of the decoys. He extended one hand and traced his fingers through the massed bugs. "You're versatile."
I felt a little uncomfortable at the compliment. "We should keep moving."
"You're not tying them up?"
I shook my head. A miscommunication on that front. Hadn't I recently been thinking about chemistry and intuitively understanding how your teammates operated? The miasma might be throwing us off in that department. "Sorry. Need to prep for it first, I'll make my move in a minute. For now, we should act normal."

"Fine." He dropped his hand to his side and rejoined us. We kept walking. I had to admire them, the way they were confident enough to avoid looking over their shoulders. I had my bugs to track our pursuer with, and I was still feeling nervous having them behind me.
"Is paranoia a side effect of this mist?"
Tattletale nodded. "Could be. As the symptoms progress, you could have fits of anger, paranoia, hallucinations…"
I swallowed.
"Or it could progress in another direction. A broader agnosia, with the inability to recognize anything, not just people."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
She nodded.
"I'm going to bind her now. If it doesn't work, or if she has a way of breaking free, we should run, with the decoys for cover."
Tattletale just smiled.
The bugs swarmed our pursuer. I'd minimized the number of bugs on them, just to be safe, with the drawback that I wasn't getting a full picture of who they were. The bugs couldn't get to her flesh to sting or bite her, but they were telling me she was female in general shape.
I had them deploy the silk they had prepared. I focused my efforts on her arms and legs. It took only a couple of seconds to get the threads in place.
She tripped as the silk went taut mid-stride. Raising one hand to try to catch herself, she found silk threads hampering those movements as well. To avoid landing face first, she twisted herself in mid-air so she hit the ground with her shoulder instead.
"Got her," I said. "Let's keep going. We can lose her."
"We should investigate," Grue said. "Make sure she isn't a threat, and deal with her if she is."
"With this miasma affecting us, there's no way to be sure of exactly of just who we're dealing with," I pointed out.
"We have Tattletale. She can tell us if this person's a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine."

The thing is that Skitter realizes that something is WRONG with the two TOO FRIENDLY "teammates of hers" but she can't understand what's going on. She have the feeling but she can't follow it. At least she's not 100% naive which is not bad. Someone is following them and I have my own feeling that we're talking about a heroine here. Miss Militia? I doubt because she'd have shoot them. Now necessary real bullets because she can't recognize them and she doesn't know if they're heroes or villains, but tranquilizers. Enough to put them on a heavy sleep. Of course, as long as "Tattletale" and "Grue" aren't immune at tranquilizers. Skitter's costume is almost impossible to be penetrated by many things so Miss Militia can't do handsome Jack-shit against them, if she doesn't want to kill them, of course. Vista is fighting other heroes so can't be her....I don't know, I need more details about the stalker.

"Tattletale's not-"
I stopped. Where had that come from?
"What?" Grue tilted his head as he looked over his shoulder at me.
"I was going to say she's not always right, but I've still got that black hole in my memory of her, so I'm not sure where that's coming from."
Grue rubbed his chin. "Something to keep in mind, but I still think we should check this person out."
"I agree," Tattletale said, a slight smile on her face. She tugged on my hand. "Come on!"
We had to stick together. I reluctantly followed, knowing that separating from the group could mean losing them altogether.
We stopped a few hundred feet away from the woman. The silk strands had formed a cord around her arms and legs, and the work of the spiders had
tightened the binding as she allowed it to slack. She hadn't made it back to her feet after falling to the ground.
Grue drew a knife.
"Hey," I said. I grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?"
"She's obviously a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine," Tattletale said.
"Fill me in? Because I must have missed something. Doesn't seem that clear to me."
"Think about it. Why is she wearing a mask like that, if not to filter out the miasma? She knew about it in advance."
"Maybe," I said. I could make out something like a gas mask or filter, now that Tattletale had pointed it out. "Maybe there's another explanation. It could
have something to do with her power?"
"It doesn't," Tattletale said.

Thinking about killing someone was one thing. I'd always assumed I might have to do it out of necessity to save a teammate… I'd even come close to doing it when attacking the Nine, not long ago. Couldn't recall who it had been, but I'd gone all out, used potentially lethal stings and bites.
That had been at a distance. Now we were looking at killing someone face to face.
The mask, there was another reason for it. The-
Tattletale interrupted my thoughts. "If you guys aren't going to do it, I can. She was following us, she was prepared for the miasma, and I'm positive she's a bad guy. My power, you know."
"We can't be certain," I said.
"With my power, I'm five hundred percent sure. Trust me," she said, grinning. She started toward the heroine.
"No," I said.
"Skitter's right," Grue said. "She could be playing possum. Best to avoid being reckless. Keep our distance and finish her."
"That's not what I meant. Let's just leave," I said. "I'll make that phone call to, um-"
"Coil," Tattletale supplied.
I nodded. "We'll get the information we need, get ourselves cured, or track down the Nine."
"Cherish could lie," Grue said.
It took me a second to place Cherish's name. Names were slipping from my mind too easily. "Maybe. We'll use our own judgement to corroborate her facts."
Tattletale scowled, "Have you forgotten how aggressively we've been going after the Slaughterhouse Nine? The attacks, the harassment, capturing Cherish and Shatterbird. And now you want to leave one of them there? We don't have to get close to her to take her out. You have the gun."
I stared down at the weapon in my hand.

"Tattletale" would be the best and cheapest actress EVER. A+. I mean, look how she manipulates Skitter to almost kill that heroine, she can give Coil anytime some good lessons in the matter of manipulation. Coil, quickly, take notes, this kid have a lot to teach you.

Why she'd be the cheapest? Because she doesn't need movie props. All she needs is a couple of people and she can turn them into the most original and artistic props the humanity ever seen. So, "Tattletale" and "Grue" are planning to turn Skitter into a cold blooded murderer by killing a woman who's already restrained and is not a danger for any of them on the moment. As "Grue" said:

"But we manage, we cope because we're a team. We belong together."

What if they WANT now to recruit Skitter, seeing how versatile and ruthless she can be most of the time and this is actually her test? Kill the woman, pass the test; not kill her, fail the test. Please, Skitter, be rational, for God sake. Tattletale is not a killer, unlike this "Tattletale". Grue only killed in self defense and to protect others, he'll NEVER kill someone defenseless no matter what. Unlike this "Grue". Even with agnosia, isn't had to see how different they're from your teammates, Skitter.

"Trust me," she said.
"No."
Both Tattletale and Grue turned to look at me.
"No?" Grue asked. "We're a team, Skitter. We're supposed to trust one another when the chips are down, have each other's backs."
I didn't like the implications of that. Like I was failing them.
But I shook my head. "No."
"Explain?" he asked. He looked calm, but I could see the irritation in his posture. Was the mist getting to him?
"The miasma… if it makes us paranoid, it could be coloring our perceptions here. Even Tattletale's."
"I would know if it was," she said. She seemed impatient.
"Maybe. But I'm not certain enough about that to take another life."
"You nearly took Siberian's," she retorted.
"Yeah. Sure. But that was different."
"I don't see how."
I stared at the bound woman who was prone on the ground, half-covered in my bugs. She was looking in my direction.
"It bugs me. This is too easy. If the Nine were this easy to take out, we wouldn't be in this situation."
"Sounds like a pretty thin justification for backing out," Grue said.

"Yeah," Tattletale added.
This kind of social pressure wasn't the sort of thing I was good at coping with. Just going by my recollection of how we'd planned many of our capers, I could usually trust some of the others to have my back when I was arguing a point. Or I'd had some other motive or reason to go along with them.
"Why are you pushing so hard for this?" I asked.
"Did you forget what they did to me?" Grue asked, his voice cold.
Him specifically? I had forgotten, yes. But I could remember that scene, the emotions then, every feeling that I'd experienced afterward. Frustration, hate,
pain, sympathy for the pain he must have experienced himself. I could remember the feeling of heartbreak, because someone I cared about was gone, in a sense.
"No," I replied.
"Where's your anger, your outrage? Or don't you care?"
"I care! It's-"
"Then end this."
I shook my head, as if I could clear it. It wasn't that I wasn't thinking clearly, necessarily. It was that my thoughts kept hitting that dead-end where I couldn't reach back for context about people, about Tattletale and Grue and the Nine. I was in the dark.
What I did know was that I'd done too many things I regretted. I wasn't about to add something as serious as murder to the list.

"Grue" knows how much Skitter cares for Grue and is playing with her emotions, trying to make her guilty for not listening and caring for him during these moments. If she'll let herself convinced by this horrible emotions play, she'll kill the heroine and become corrupted. She'll just make their game and they'll win. If she doesn't kill the woman, they'll either kill her themselves while Skitter is watching or they'll wait for Skitter to pay attention to something else then do the job. But they'll fail because they'll be unable to break her in this way. They need a broken, completely changed Skitter, not a normal one. While "Grue" seems to have an odd respect for the normal Skitter (or maybe he just pretends to respect her) he still will never agree having in his team someone who can't kill.

Grue must have seen something in my posture, because he shook his head and turned away. "Give me the gun, then."
"Just use your power," Tattletale told him.
"I want Skitter to acknowledge that she doesn't care enough about this team or about me to do what's necessary. She can do that by admitting she doesn't have the courage to shoot and allow me to do it."
"That's not what this is about," I said. "Murder is serious. You don't kill without being absolutely certain it's right. And nothing's certain for as long as we're under the influence of this miasma."
He scoffed. "And you call yourself a supervillain?"
"I call myself Skitter. If someone wants to stick me with some other label, that's their issue to deal with, not mine."
"You're not giving me the gun?"
"No."
He shrugged, "So you don't care at all, about what happened to me. You don't care about this team. And you'll even look down on us while you do it. Your contemptible friends."
"I care. More than you know. But you told me, not long ago, that I should follow my heart, trust my gut. Fine. That's what I'm doing. You attack her, I'll fight to save her."
He barked out a laugh, "You'll fight me? You're a traitor now?"
The word hit home. I must have flinched.
"A traitor again," he added.
I snapped my head up to look at him in surprise.
"I wonder what it says that the notion of you being a traitor is so ingrained in my impression of you that it jumps to mind, even with the mist affecting me?"
"That's enough," I said.

"I know you like me. I can read it on your face, I could see the way your eyes widened when you heard my name. You're an open book in some ways. And I'll tell you right now, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you."
I felt a nervous feeling deep in my gut. It wasn't pleasant, at stark odds to what he was saying.
Grue's words spoke to that feeling of trepidation. "But this? It's telling me I could never have a relationship with you, never be close to you, because I'll
always wonder if you'll stab me in the back or fuck me over, fail to do what's necessary in a situation like this. I'll never be able to shake that image of you as a traitor."
He kept saying that word, traitor, hammering it in.
"Unless I take this gun and shoot that woman, who you're convinced is a member of the Nine," I guessed what he was getting at.
"Guess I had the wrong impression of you," he said. The emotion in his tone was so different that it caught me off guard. Almost contemplative. If I thought of it as him emotionally closing down, it almost fit with the impression I associated with Grue. At the same time, it didn't quite jibe with what I was seeing.
Again, I felt that distinct discomfort.
Is this how I lose my mind?
I shrugged. "I guess you did."
I carefully holstered the gun, as if hiding it could keep it from coming up again in conversation.
A long pause reigned.
"I'm disappointed, but there's nothing I can do about that," he said. Then he smiled. He turned and began walking away. "Let's go."

Gosh, "Grue" knows about Grue feelings for Skitter. Well, original Grue is still not sure what he's feeling for her for real but this "Grue" believes that its love. "Grue" knows too much about people, about their powers (well, he was still surprised that Tattletale's power is not perfect), their minds, their emotions, EVERYTHING. I'm more convinced now than ever that he was psychologist/psychiatrist before. Or he's a Blaster (Jack is a Blaster, right?) AND a Thinker, having two classifications. Maybe the Thinker classification helps him to instantly know how everyone around him think and act accordingly to their emotions. Yes, he must be a Thinker or he have experience in psychology.

"Just like that?" I asked.
"We're leaving her?" Tattletale asked.
"Seems we have to. Tattletale, can you use your power to make sure the lady from the Nine doesn't pose a danger?"
Tattletale nodded, smiling.
"Then let's hurry. We wasted too much time here."
"Let me know when she's not in your range anymore," Tattletale said to me. "I'll try to use my power to make sure she isn't following us."
I nodded.
She hugged my arm, "You're stubborn, but we're still friends, right?"
I nodded again. I felt like I was back in school, in a situation where I couldn't say anything without saying the wrong thing. Strange, to recall being around the bullies rather than in the company of my team.
The argument weighed on me, as did the things Grue had said, the judgements. Had I been wrong? Were we risking letting one of the Nine get away, to murder others? Was I arguing because I was still clinging to old ideals, or because the miasma was making me divisive?
Even if the miasma was to blame, I hated the idea of failing the others yet again.
This situation was fucking with my head. I still felt like I was in the middle of a fight, that heart pounding mode where I was ready for bullets or laser blasts to start flying, for me or a friend to be in mortal danger, where a split second response meant the difference between life or death.
Except there was no danger here. The only people nearby were the woman we were leaving behind, Grue and Tattletale.

I glanced at Tattletale as we ran. Could I trust them? They had been in the miasma for a little longer than I had, and I was already experiencing what I could only label as paranoia. With only a difference of minutes, Legend had been thrust into a paranoid state where he was taking a reckless, offensive course of action, eliminating everyone from the battlefield, regardless of whether they might be friend or enemy. How much was it affecting these two? How would it influence their actions?
More to the point, what was my best course of action here? If I worked on the assumption that I could trust them, would they drag me into a situation that was just as bad as what we'd gone through with the bound woman? Or if I didn't trust them, if I allowed myself to become suspicious and take countermeasures, would that be a slippery slope that led to me trying to kill them, in fear for my own life?
We'd come close to fighting just now.
"You're awfully quiet," Tattletale said.
"Leave her be," Grue told her, his voice low.
What was I supposed to do? I didn't trust myself to handle this alone, not with the speed at which this general unease was building up. But I wasn't sure I trusted them either. Something about the argument, it felt off. Wrong.
"She's out of my range," I said. "Tattletale?"
"I'll keep an eye out!" She grinned.
Traitor. I could almost hear the accusation.
I'd lied. The woman was still in my range.
"Is there service?" Grue asked. I must have looked confused, because he clarified by saying, "The phone."
I pulled my phone out of the space between my breasts and the armor at my front and checked the display.
"Yeah," I said. Why does that bug me?
"Call Coil," Tattletale reminded me. "We need to know where Cherish is."

Of course they want to know where Cherish is- they want to punish her. I honestly don't give a fuck about whatever punishment Cherish will receive, in the same manner she didn't give a fuck about so many lives she destroyed, including the lives of parents that she forced to kill their children. For this thing alone, she deserves the worst kind of punishment. The WORST, I mean it. Speaking about Cherish, I'm sure that even if she was affected by miasma, she should know who "Grue" and "Tattletale" are for real because she can feel their emotions, different from real Tattletale and Grue's emotions. Tattletale will also know that something is off with "Grue" for example but right know she's trapped on the roof with Trickster and I'm very worried about her. Trickster already have a complicated personality. If you add paranoia on top of everything, right now he's not exactly someone who inspire security and trust. I also wonder about someone...how agnosia will work in her case? She's going to forget her own existence? She'll start asking herself existential questions trying to see how much of her is real and how much is just the idea that she can be a real person? Ah, I think I remember her name. Agnosia will turn Imp into a mess because of her unusual power. Hope I'm wrong.

I found him in the contact list and made the call.
"Speaker phone?" Grue suggested.
I nodded, selected the option and hit the button.
As the first ring sounded out, my swarm sense alerted me to the bound woman breaking free of the silk strands, as if it was effortless. Had she been playing possum after all, hoping we would get close?
I looked at Tattletale, trying to see if had any inkling that this supposed member of the Nine was free.
Nothing. Tattletale turned to me and grinned.
"No trouble incoming?" I asked, as the phone rang again.
She shook her head. "All good."
Was her power not working as well as she'd thought? I couldn't even recollect what it was, but she'd said she would keep an eye out… and there was
something alarming occurring this very moment.
"Skitter," Coil answered the phone. "I've been made aware that Bonesaw has deployed the ace she had up her sleeve."
"Yeah. Agnostia… Agnosia-inducing mist. Permanent, according to Tattletale."
"I see." I could hear the sounds of typing on a keyboard. "Agnosia… Panacea can't reverse the effects?"
"She's not here. We're trying to find her."
"And you need Cherish for that, I suppose."
I was grateful that he was supplying the names, because it meant I didn't have to bog down the conversation by remembering or asking. Grue, Tattletale and I had brought them up recently enough that it wasn't a huge leap to remember their names.

The woman who I'd tied up with the spider silk was walking towards us. Her progress was hampered by the decoys. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn't an imminent problem, and I was more interested in gauging just how far gone Tattletale's power was.
"Except that with the agnosia, we can't remember where she is and go meet her."
"Meeting Cherish would be a grave error," Coil spoke.
"Just put us in contact with her, then?"
"Tattletale informed me of your code. You remember how it's put together?"
"Yeah. My memory's fine, it's just my ability to identify people and remember stuff about them that's fucked up."
Tattletale glared at me. Right. She didn't like swearing.
"Then, using a name we're both familiar with, D-gangrene."
"I can't remember names. I don't think I can use the code."
"Troubling. You must understand my predicament. For all I know, you're a third party using Skitter's voice to make the request. With shapeshifters, empaths and other methods of coercion, I have to be very careful about the dissemination of information."
"I know."
The woman was still approaching. Tattletale and Grue weren't talking.
Something was wrong.
"What if we kept you on the line?" I suggested.
"That will suffice."
There was a pause, then the sound of background noise. A ring sounded, different from the one before. It was interrupted as Cherish picked up.
"I have never been so sorry to miss out," Cherish said. She sounded a bit hoarse.
"We're requesting your help," Coil spoke.
"Oh, you need my help in more ways than you're aware of. Not that I'm going to provide it. Skitter's on the line, I believe?"
"She is."
"I'm here," I confirmed.
"And Tattletale and Grue, of course." She chuckled. "How amusing. Seems like I'm in high demand."
"They're looking for Panacea," Coil said. "Identifying her for us would be one way to achieve revenge on the Slaughterhouse Nine for turning on you."
"Revenge? Not my interest in the slightest. I've learned my lesson and I've become the poster child for team loyalty."
Coil paused, then said, "I'm prepared to offer you some enticements. I imagine your current quarters can't be too comfortable."
"Don't suppose these enticements will be hand delivered?"
"They will be provided by remote control, as your food has been."
"Some headphones and music would be nice," she said. "The sound of the waves banging on the hull is driving me crazy."
"Such could be arranged."
"Nah, I'm totally fucking with you. Music, as if."
There were too many things that seemed off. Cherish's tone among them. I glanced around. The woman was still following us, throwing herself after decoys, verifying they were false, then retracing her steps. She was slowly closing in. I positioned Atlas so he would be ready to distract her if it came down to it.
"You're stalling?" Coil asked. "I don't see the point."
"Just trying to see if I can provoke a reaction from you. There's only so many times I can read the labels of the shipping containers before I lose my mind.
Have to amuse myself somehow."
"What will it take for you to tell us where Panacea is?" Coil asked.
"Oh, I'm feeling generous, and I want to see what happens. I'll tell you that as a freebie. They're at Arcadia. Somewhere in the top floor."
A freebie. Something was going on, and I wasn't aware what. I had to piece it together, but I had so little information.
"And maybe I could offer you something, in exchange for some goodwill. Maybe you'll even want to let me go free, no obligations."
The feeling of dread that had been following me wasn't getting worse as the woman approached. It was staying steady, like someone had a gun pointed at me, and they'd had it aimed my way for some time now.
"I'm listening," Coil said, "But if this is frivolous or another waste of our time-"
"Nah. Critically important. I'll trust that you'll take it for what it's worth and repay me in kind."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Oh, it's simple. Going by what I've been able to observe around the city, there seems to be a major concern. Si Jack effugit civitatem, mundus terminabitur."

Coil isn't affected by miasma. Not surprising, he's staying in his underground base all this time and the miasma can't reach there, this must be the explanation. Or because he's such a huge asshole, even agnosia hates him and doesn't want to be near him.

Cherish is UNPLEASANT as ever, but at least she told them where is Amy. Thank you, Cherish, if Amy will die, you'll be the responsible one for her death. She also told them something I recognize is in latin, but I don't know its meaning. So, let's try a wild guess (latin is also a bit similar with romanian): If Jack leaves the city, the world ends. Now, I'll try a google translate: If Jack has escaped the city, the world will be terminated. The same shit, I was right.

Cherish wants to tell Skitter, as subtle as possible, that Jack is right next to her.

"I'm not versed in Latin," Coil spoke, sounding annoyed.
"For shame, Coil, for shame," Cherish said. Her voice was too cheerful. "You can't sell the cultured supervillain image without the ability to make quips in an ancient language. I had the benefit of my power, languages are easier to learn when you can get a sense of what the other person's feeling."
"That was something about Jack?" I asked, "Repeat that in English?"
"Doesn't matter anymore," she replied. "The message was delivered. I'll leave you to think about it."
If only I could have blamed the miasma for my idiocy. Everything clicked into place.
I kept my voice level, "I don't think you'll get much goodwill if we don't understand what the fuck you're talking about. Coil? We're moving out now."
"Report back when you've found the healer," Coil told me.
I hung up before Cherish could speak, then I glanced at the others. "Let's go? Arcadia high?"

They nodded.
My heart pounded with such force that my vision wavered. I turned to head toward Arcadia high, joined by the two members of the Nine. Stay calm, don't let on that you know.
If I could direct the woman to us…
The miasma's effects had almost made me lose track of her. She was fighting, grappling with mechanical spiders. She went from fighting like an ordinary individual to moving at high speeds and throwing crushing punches, then back again. I couldn't think of how to help her, and she was obviously unable to help me.
Cherish had been engaging in double-speak, saying one thing to us, while addressing the two people with me the entire time. She'd told them about where she was being held captive, and she'd offered the most valuable information she had to avoid getting tortured to death after they'd freed her. From the way she'd talked about the message being received, one of the people with me had to be Jack.
Jack was slated to bring about the end of the world if he left Brockton Bay, and now he knew.
Couldn't meet their eyes, didn't want to speak, in case I let on that I knew. I could barely breathe, I was so afraid of letting my emotions show.
My gun was in the compartment at my back. I'd put it away at the conclusion of our argument, and with the compartment broken in my fall from Atlas's back, I'd been forced to put it in a place where it wasn't easy to draw. I couldn't be sure I would be able to draw it and fire. I was still handicapped, unaware of their powers. I was fighting blind.

Come on, Skitter, there are not complicated words to understand even for someone who doesn't know latin. Shame on you, Coil, and you call yourself an intellectual villain? I would be ashamed in your place. At least Skitter realized now who her buddies are. And I think that the heroine is Battery -she seems like she needs time to recharge her power. Gosh, I know she's corrupt and everything but I don't want her to die. She's a nice woman despite everything, she's a passionate heroine and she have a cute relationship with Assault. Assault is going to hate S9 forever if something will happen to his sweetheart. And not just S9 but Skitter too. Because she was trapped by Skitter in her spiderwebs.

If Jack or the girl killed Amy, just about everyone in the city would die violently from the miasma's effects. But I couldn't stop them without letting on that I knew. Fighting them put me at a clear disadvantage, and-
"Skitter," Jack spoke.
I didn't waste time turning to face him. I gripped the hair of the blonde girl beside me and virtually hauled her off her feet as I dragged her around to a position between Jack and myself. Jack was already swinging his knife.
The knife cut the girl more than it cut me. I could feel it raking across the exterior of my costume, failing to penetrate, but he was swinging it underhand, and it caught me in the chin, slicing through the side of my cheek and up to my temple.
I tried to keep a hold on the girl for the sake of using her as a human shield, but I saw her reach into her dress and withdraw some vials. I shoved her toward Jack, then stepped forward to kick her square between the shoulder blades. She collided with him, interrupting his follow-up swing. For good measure, I drew the bugs from beneath my costume and sent them chasing after her. Some capsaicin-laced bugs, just the few I had remaining.
Jack caught her shoulders and spun her around so she faced me. The vials were already billowing with a chemical reaction. She threw them at me.
I backed away, and they hit the ground between our two groups, black smoke joining the crimson mist around us.
"You've outlived your usefulness, Skitter," Jack spoke.
If I'd just had a minute or two more to decide on a course of action.
"It was fun. I almost wish I'd nominated you for the Nine. You're versatile, and there's so many weak points I could have exploited if I'd had more time. If Cherish's information on you wasn't so misleading, I think I could have made you shoot the heroine. To corrupt you like that, it would have been amusing."
I fumbled for the gun, using my bugs to get a sense for where it was. In the same motion that I pointed it, Jack slapped it out of my hand with two slashes of his knife. He was a dozen feet away, but the knife nonetheless connected with my weapon.
My bugs began to gather like a dark cloud, their mass casting a shadow on the already gloomy surroundings.
So I end the world? Interesting."
"The source is a little unreliable," I lied.
"Still, I would love to see how that comes about."
"You won't live to," I told him.
"I'll make sure he does," the girl informed me.
My swarm could feel others approach from the heroine's direction. They were the size of dogs, and they skipped forward on mechanical legs. The mechanical spiders. Dozens of them, coming straight for me.
If I was judging right, they were running faster than I could.
I sent the swarm after Jack and the girl, massed into thousands of bugs. Some groups clustered so tight together that they looked like massive, amorphous black entities, amoebas floating through a cityscape painted in shades of red and black. Atlas heard my call and headed my way from the place I'd positioned him, too far away to join the fight for a minute or two.
The girl was already mixing something else together. Plumes of white smoke billowed around her, almost luminescent after so long spent in the crimson mist.
My bugs died on contact with the gas.
Everything I'd learned about my enemies had been blocked. I had no information on them, no sense of what to expect. They weren't so handicapped.
She tipped half the vial's contents into an empty container and handed it to Jack. Both protected from my power, they started backing away.
I moved to edge around the cloud of black smoke, but Jack struck me with the knife. I had to use my forearms to cover my unprotected face. I just had my glasses, some bugs, and a layer of cloth protecting it. Nothing that would guard against Jack's cuts.
When I'd lowered my arms, they had already turned a corner, running in the general direction of Arcadia high. Running around the cloud of black smoke cost me a precious minute. I made my way around the same corner they'd rounded, and stopped short as I came face to face with another black cloud.
Couldn't match their speed, not with these noxious clouds slowing me down. With the heroine lying unconscious in the street, several blocks in the wrong direction, I had no allies to turn to. Worse, anyone I came across was as likely as not to be a threat. It was down to Atlas and me, and Atlas was especially vulnerable to both of my opponents. I couldn't even fly after them without risking being cut down in midair.

I had minimal information on my opponents, while they knew enough about me to completely counter my powers. Topping it all off, the mechanical spiders were steadily, inexorably closing in on me. I'd lost my last fight with the things, and there were dozens more this time around. Couldn't fly without exposing myself to Jack's power, couldn't stay on the ground without getting swarmed.
I swallowed hard and held out one hand to grab Atlas's horn as he landed. In a moment, we were in the air, giving chase.
I wasn't thinking about winning anymore. I was thinking in terms of minimizing the damage when we lost.

So: CHERISH IS FUCKED because Jack and Bonesaw will not forgive her even if she helped them find Amy. AMY IS FUCKED if Skitter will not arrive in time to try to stop them from killing her. SKITTER FOUGHT LIKE A TOTAL BADASS against a very good fighter with a knife and a girl with thousands of chemical dangerous vials at her disposition, both of them having safeguards. BATTERY IS UNCONSCIOUS, PROBABLY SEVERELY INJURED.
And the twist of the twists who took me by surprise is: Jack didn't know that he's going to destroy the world until he was told. What?

I expected him to plan the destruction of the world not to have no idea about this. God, its almost funny :lol Well, Jack, you heard the ladies. This is your new job, destroy the motherfucking world. Let's see how you'll manage to do this without previously planning it.

Good night and sleep well, my friends. Gosh, next Chapter will be another one about this agnosia shit "sighs".

blackarrow · Jul 16, 2018

ExNihilo said:
Indeed she didn't. Problem is, Fire is super-effective against Bug.

Skitter is afraid that one day Sundancer might fight against her? Doesn't make any sense, knowing Sundancer's personality. I doubt that a serious fight between them is going to happen, unless Sundancer will go nuts or Skitter will violently attack her first. Even if her team would suddenly try to kill Skitter, I can't see Sundancer being ok with them.

blackarrow · Jul 16, 2018

rafuki22 said:
You know blacksparrow, I do not like agnosia or anything related to biological, physical, mental, emotional manipulation, etc ... It makes me weak in my body, having to lie down because of how uncomfortable I feel when reading something similar, which is strange because I have read and seen worse things, ... or maybe it was just a drop of sugar.
Edit: I do not like to be limited, or, to limit.
Editx2: Also, it is not paranoia when someone wants to kill you for real, or worse things.

Believe me, I HATE this whole Agnosia Arc. Its interesting but its not very ok for me. Can't wait for the things to be normal again. I'm not so disturbed by physical/emotional manipulation- as long the ones manipulated are characters I generally dislike

(since I definitely agree with Regent controlling Shadow Stalker and Shatterbird) but I'm disturbed by general paranoia, lack of trust, people pretending to be someone else only to manipulate the main hero and try to corrupt her.

ExNihilo · Jul 16, 2018

blackarrow said:
Skitter is afraid that one day Sundancer might fight against her? Doesn't make any sense, knowing Sundancer's personality. I doubt that a serious fight between them is going to happen, unless Sundancer will go nuts or Skitter will violently attack her first. Even if her team would suddenly try to kill Skitter, I can't see Sundancer being ok with them.

More like: Imagine you had a superpower, and someone you didn't know had a power that countered it pretty hard. You no longer have the safety the power provided, because they can beat you easily. Same reason people were so afraid of Hatchet Face.

KnownParadox · Jul 17, 2018

Don't worry, the Agnosia Arc is almost done, as you can see by the .9 there the Arc is almost over, I'm getting the impression you're irritated.

Also, can I just say your update speed is awesome? I'm almost having trouble keeping up, and that's a good thing, because you'll get to my favourite parts quicker.

AmbarGriss · Jul 17, 2018

blackarrow said:
Skitter is afraid that one day Sundancer might fight against her? Doesn't make any sense, knowing Sundancer's personality. I doubt that a serious fight between them is going to happen, unless Sundancer will go nuts or Skitter will violently attack her first. Even if her team would suddenly try to kill Skitter, I can't see Sundancer being ok with them.

More like that Sundancer reminds Taylor of her weakness.

blackarrow · Jul 17, 2018

Hello, people who HATE Agnosia as much as me. I'm still baffled over the twist that Jack have no idea that he's going to end the world. I mean, I was under impression that he have already plans about how he wants the world to end but NOPE...he didn't know anything, he was just as surprised as everyone else. Awesome, let's see if I can see the possibilities of Jack to bring the Armageddon upon the innocent world (and I'm not referring at the movie with the same title here

) He can do one of these things: kill someone who have the power to keep the humanity alive and safe or manipulate someone with the power to destroy the world, convincing them that humanity deserves to be exterminated. What if Theo will develop a power somehow linked to the whole world and if he'll die, the world will follow him in his grave, metaphorically speaking? Jack will kill him and will end the world in this way. As for the second option, there are 7 beings with the capacity to make the Earth goes BOOM. 3 Triumvirate members, 3 Endbringers and Scion. Jack can try to manipulate and corrupt Triumvirate but I highly doubt that he'll be successful especially since he doesn't have mind control powers, neither mind control Tinker technology and I just can't see Legend especially turning from: "I want to protect the world" to "Fuck the world". He also have a family. He won't kill his husband and son, for fuck sake. So, Triumvirate are out of discussion. Now, Endbringers. They're basically wild animals/aliens. They don't have human intelligence, they can be trained like Bitch's dogs if Jack would be able to "speak their language". They already hate the world, they're killing machine, if Jack will find a method to control them, they'll let themselves being controlled. But Simurgh, she's kind of different from other Endbringers (I saw art with her, she looks like a human female, naked- Wildbow's guilty pleasure in creating some of his female characters

, and with countless of wings around her body) she have an intelligence close to that of a human -since she can see the future and do whatever she can to make it happen- so I doubt she'll listen to Jack. Its a posiblity that she's arrogant and sees herself as a goddess, a goddess who'll never listen to a mere mortal. Again, I'm not sure how Jack will convince Simurgh to stop playing her little games and start to destroy the world for real. As for Scion- he's a demi-god alien, I'm sure he can destroy the world if he wants in like few days and nobody would stop him, unless they'll find his weaknesses, of course, but I don't see him listening to Jack if he'll tell him something like: "Aren't you tired to be a hero? Don't you think that is much better to become a villain and destroy instead of saving?" I'd rather see Scion staring at him like he's a madman who DARED to order a demi-god to do something he wants. Then either kill him for his shameless boldness or leave. I don't trust Scion and I'll never trust him but I can't see Jack controlling him somehow or forcing him to do something he doesn't personally want. If he'll ever want to start destroying the world instead of keeping saving it, he'll do it by his own will, not because someone like Jack asked him. So, Jack will either find ways to mind control people or kill someone that the whole world depends of him/her. Enough will talking, now back to....LET'S FUCKING SAVE AMY, THE ONLY HOPE TO GET RID OF THIS AGNOSIA NIGHTMARE Prey 14.10

Arcadia high was the school every kid in Brockton Bay wanted to attend. A big part of that was the fact that everyone knew that the Wards attended Arcadia, and attending meant that any one of your classmates could be a superhero or superheroine. To anyone else, you could just as easily be one, too. It wasn't a rich kid's school like Immaculata, but it was a good school. Every classmate treated other classmates with the utmost respect. Both the students and the school itself maintained a certain status and pride as a consequence.
Now it was something else, and it inspired entirely different feelings. The front gate looked like it had aged a thousand years, the sharp corners of the cut stone had rounded off, the ivy that once wound around it had withered. The windows of the building were all shattered, empty of glass, and the fields were a patchwork of overgrown grass and mud. With the faint tendrils of colored mist that surrounded the grounds, it looked like a prime location for a horror movie.

I had little doubt I was in the right place.
Panacea's the healer, top floor. Jack is the slasher, the blond girl the chemist-tinker. Panacea's the healer on the top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist.
I recited the words as a refrain, as if I could hold the names and identities of the major players in my short-term memory by constantly reminding myself of who they were.
The school was on a hill, meaning the water that was producing the miasma was far enough away that only traces of it reached this far. The little vapor that got to the school was held at bay by the stone wall that ringed the school. The design suggested it had been intended more for aesthetics than for utility, but it was serving a purpose nonetheless.
Panacea's the healer, top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl the chemist-tinker. Panacea is the healer, top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist-tinker.
It seemed like the mechanical spiders had lost track of me. They would probably give up the chase and return to their master, but it was one less thing to worry about for the time being.
Jack and the tinker would have gone in through the ground floor. I decided to land on the roof. The second I was on terra firma, I reached for my phone to check. No signal.
I needed to signal someone about what was going on. I was woefully underequipped, and I doubted my ability to win this alone, especially when my opponents weren't as disadvantaged as I was.
I could use something like a giant nine crafted out of bugs floating over the school to signal that the pair was here… but there was no guarantee that someone would come. There was also the possibility that it would lead to the good guys dropping another bomb on us. That would get the healer and maybe even me killed. Panacea had to survive, or everyone in the city would die in the aftermath of Bonesaw's miasma.
Panacea is the healer, she's on the top floor, Jack is the slasher, the blond girl is the chemist-tinker.
I tenderly touched the cut on my face. Jack must have pulled back as I used the tinker as a shield, because the cut was fairly shallow. It was long, though, and my fingertips were wet with blood after I touched my hand to it. I couldn't distinguish the blood from the black fabric of my gloves, so I couldn't tell how much it actually was. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
There was a door on the rooftop, and I used my knife to pry the doorknob partially off, then gave it a firm kick to remove it. The lock was built into the handle, and it didn't take long to figure out how to open it when I could see the internal mechanisms. It wasn't exactly high security, more intended to keep kids from getting onto the roof than keeping people on the roof from getting in.

Yes, Amy is not infested because Arcadia is a safe place for her against Miasma. So Amy can indeed create an antidote, give it to Skitter and tell her to give it to others as well. That won't be a problem. The problem is that Jack and Bonesaw arrived at Arcadia before Skitter and I won't be surprised of Crawler isn't with them, his simple presence being enough to destroy Skitter's hopes that she will be able to save Amy. Jack and Bonesaw are tough fighters too, but Crawler will be an extremely unfair advantage for them, unless Amy can get close enough to him, touch him when he expects the least and melt him in a pool of goo, also destroying his OP regeneration in the process. But Bonesaw and Jack will take care so this thing will never happen and...I can't see any solution for Amy to fight back/survive as long as she's alone against Bonesaw, Jack and Crawler. I better pray for Crawler to not be there or Skitter to find a very smart solution to save her.

Just past the door was a set of stairs that led down into the top floor of the building. It looked like a janitorial closet. I sent Atlas down to check before venturing down myself, and I began distributing my swarm through the school. I prepared silk lines across doorways and hallways to inform me of others passing through, placed ants, earwigs, centipedes and pill bugs on the walls to give me a sense of the layout, and sent flies to scan the interiors of each room to see if I couldn't find anyone.
Again, I repeated the refrain in my head, reminding myself about who was in the building. I wasn't sure it was helping, but I didn't want to get tricked again.
There were two hallways and three classrooms my bugs couldn't enter without dying on the spot. That marked out a relatively small area that the Nine could be.
The biggest issue was that I couldn't find Panacea. Did that mean she was in close confines with the enemy? It wasn't a good thought.
As I laid silk lines across possible entryways to alert myself about enemy movements, I was careful to check each area before I advanced further into the building. My eyes searched for details while my swarm scanned the walls and the ground.
I was a short distance away from the Nine when I saw a wet spot on the wall, complete with discoloration of the paint. I sent bugs in, and they felt shards of glass on the floor around the patch. I wouldn't have said that the swarm smelled anything, but there was something heavy in the air as flies beat their wings, the muscular action simultaneously drawing oxygen in. Whatever it was, it was dense, cloying, odorless and colorless, only extending a dozen feet around the spot.
I backtracked and picked a different route. My pace slowed to half of what it had been as I searched for other telltale details. Twice, I found similar traps, both with that odourless smoke, and twice I had to change my route.

I paused outside the bug-killing zone. Flies had ferried spiders to me, and I started organizing them to produce lengths of silk cord. I left them behind while I creeped closer and listened in.
"…minds do think alike. I did something very similar for Siberian." A girl's voice.
"Shut up. We're nothing alike." Another girl.
"We could be! Haven't you ever wanted to start over? I could make you younger! We'd be the same age! And wear matching outfits! Oh! I could do plastic surgery, we could be twins!"
"Did- did you do that to yourself? Make yourself young?"
"No." A male voice. "Rest assured, Bonesaw's immaturity is genuine. Both an asset in how it makes her that much more creative, free in her ways. A detriment in other ways."
"Doesn't… that bother you? Him saying that about you?"
"Jack knows what he's doing."
"I do. I know a lot of things," Jack spoke, his voice smooth, almost seductive.
"Don't. I know you've got a silver tongue. I don't want to hear it."
"You prefer the alternative?" Jack asked, his voice cool.
I could picture him holding that knife of his, the threat all too clear.
There was a long pause.
He spoke, "I suppose not. So let's dialogue."

Fuck, Bonesaw and Jack found Amy first. Crawler is not there- he might be somewhere else, maybe stalking Skitter. But she'd have know thanks to her bugs and I suppose he's not in Arcadia. So far, Jack doesn't seem to want to kill Amy, he's trying to convince her to join them, manipulating her with something that she I always wanted to have- a family, a better sister than the one she have. Gosh, Amy, whatever you'll do, DON'T LISTEN THEM. DON'T LET YOURSELF BE CORRUPTED LIKE THIS. You're a very ok girl, you're not a natural born killer and you have a lot of qualities that you're unaware of. Don't let these murderous sickos to crush your spirit and steal your soul. So, its confirmed that Bonesaw is indeed a child, not an adult pretending to be a child. Fuck...I have to hate a child. This goes against one of my strong morals. I don't like this, I don't like this at all, but...what Bonesaw did so far, I can't pretend that she isn't responsible and she isn't a horrible person. I can't pretend I don't hate her and I don't wish for her a fitting punishment. I just hope that she's the only evil child in this story. But then I remember Heartbreaker who might have little children as his soldiers and I'm like.....FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. Some parts of this story are a torture for me to read. Especially the ones who contradict my morals or play with my fears.

"Go ahead," Panacea's voice was small, almost defeated.
"What's holding you back? You're capable of so much, of changing the world, of destroying it, but you're so very small, Amelia Claire Lavere."
His voice was almost mocking as he said her name.
"That's not my name."
"It's the name you were born with. Imagine my surprise when I found out your relation to Marquis. In my last visit to Brockton Bay, I crossed paths with each of the major players. I met the man.
I must tell you, Amelia, he was a very interesting character."
"I don't really want to know."
"I'm going to tell you. And I have another motive, but I'll get to that in a moment. Marquis was a man of honor. He decided on the rules he would play by and he stuck to them. He put his life and limb at risk to try to keep me from killing women and children, and I decided to see if I could use that to break him. I admit I failed."
"He killed Allfather's daughter."
"No, Amelia, he didn't."
There was a pause.
"Did you kill her?"
"No. What I'm saying is that Marquis would not have killed the girl, even under duress; that was one of the rules he set for himself. If he was going to violate that rule, he would have done it when I'd tried to break him."

"Allfather put a contract on my head before he died, because of what Marquis did. Because- It's how I found out he was my dad. A letter from Dragon to Carol."
"Carol… Ah yes, Brandish. Well, I suspect either Dragon was manipulating you, or your father was manipulating Dragon in an effort to get a message to you."
"A message."
"That he's there, that he exists. Perhaps he sought to ensure he wasn't forgotten by his child. He was an old-fashioned individual, so it makes sense that he'd seek immortality through his progeny."
Bonesaw piped up. "That's stupid. Why do something like that when someone like me could make you immortal for real?"
"Shush, now. Finish sewing yourself up while Amelia and I talk."
"Okay," Bonesaw said. Her voice overlapped with Panacea saying, "Stop saying that. It's not my name."
"Isn't it?"
There was another silence.
"You're your father's daughter. Both of you are bound up in rules you've imposed on yourselves. His rules defined his demeanor, the boundaries he worked within, the goals he sought to achieve and how he achieved them. They were his armor as much as his power was. I would guess your rules are your weakness. Rather than focus you, they leave you in free fall, nothing to grasp on to except your sister there, and we both know how that has turned out."
Sister. I made a mental note of that. There were four people in that room.
"I- how do you know this?"

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTERS AND ONE OF THE BEST MEN IN THIS STORY: Mr Lavere alias Marquis. God, he's fucking PERFECT. I liked him before but right now I LOVE him: not only that he doesn't kill women and children but he risked his life to protect them. This is how a real man should behave, ok? Because men are protectors first of all. Mr Lavere understood this old-fashioned but realistic view of life too and he behave accordingly. He didn't even killed Iron Rain, only lied that he killed her. So, he won't kill women not even if he's forced to do it. Not even Jack, with all his tests and manipulation skills, was able to break this HONORABLE MAN. Yes, I'm fully aware that he was a gang leader and a scary villain and he killed his men but I'm sure that he killed only gang members (his gang and enemy gangs), not innocent civilians. "sighs" Yes, maybe he indirectly killed people with drugs and/or weapons (depends of his gang's sources of income) but he's a villain, after all. Not a hero, neither a Skitter. He have his own dark side, his own flaws, but he's a very honorable villain who proved to be impossible to be subdued by Jack. If only Amy will follow his example...Gosh, now I'm selfish and I kind of want for Amy to go to Birdcage, she'll have a wonderful relationship with her father if she'll allow him to be part of her life.

"Our emotion reader picked up on some. I've figured out the rest. As you might expect, I'm rather familiar with damaged individuals."
Bonesaw giggled.
I didn't like the way this was going. I looked down the hall to see the doors. Each door had once had a window on the upper half, but there were only slivers left, the rest scattered over the floor.
In an ideal world, some distraction would present itself, or the conversation would become a heated argument and they would distract each other. I could rise from my crouching position, step forward, aim my gun and fire. Unload the gun's clip on Jack and Bonesaw.
Or I'd miss, resulting in the messy deaths of Panacea, her sister and I. I really needed that distraction if I was going to do this.
"I'm not… not that type of damaged. I'm not a monster," Panacea protested. As an afterthought, she added, "No offense."
"I've been called worse. I almost relish being called a monster. As though I've transcended humanity and become something from myth."
"Myth."
"And according to Cherish, it may well be a destruction myth."
"What?"
"She recently informed me that the world is going to end because of me. Not quite sure how or when. It could well be that I'm the butterfly that flaps his wings and stirs a hurricane into being through a chain of cause and effect."
"I don't want the world to end," Bonesaw said. "It's fun."
"It is. But I expect it won't end altogether. There's always going to be survivors."
"True."
"And it makes for an interesting picture. After everything's gone, there'll be a new beginning. Who better to craft the remains into a new world than you and Mannequin?"

"And Amelia?"
"And Amelia, if she so chooses. We could be like gods in a new world."
"You're crazy," Panacea muttered.
"According to studies, clinically depressed individuals have a more accurate grasp of reality than the average person. We tell ourselves lies and layer falsehoods and self-assurances over one another in order to cope with a world colored by pain and suffering. We put blinders on. If we lose that illusion, we crumble into depression or we crack and go mad. So perhaps I'm crazy, but only because I see things too clearly?"
"No," Panacea's voice was quiet. "Um. You're not going to kill me if I argue, are you?"
"I'm liable to kill you if you don't."
"It's not that you see too clearly. I think your view is warped."
"Over the course of millions of generations that led to your birth, how many of your ancestors were successful because they were cruel to others, because they lied, cheated, stole from their kin, betrayed their brothers and sisters, warred with their neighbors, killed? We know about Marquis, so that's one."
How many were successful because they cooperated? I wondered.
Jack probably had a rebuttal to my question, but I wasn't about to speak up to hear it, and Panacea didn't ask. She fell silent.

I like how Jack admits that he's fucking crazy and a monster, at least he's brutal honest with what he's for real and don't pretend to be something he isn't. He enjoys knowing that he'll destroy the world and he takes pride in becoming a god over the survivors who'll remain behind. Mannequin if confirmed alive by Jack, such a "good" news, thank you, Jack.

Fuck you and my white, hard shelled, walking nightmare. He also plans to turn all the survivors into "people" like Mannequin or whatever supposed Evil Goddess Amy will want to do with them. Monsters. Being gods over a world in ruins populated by monsters. Now I understand why you're so happy to be called crazy, Jack. Your craziness is a world record. Everyone would be happy with a world record, no matter what kind of record.

I was tensed, ready to move and shoot the second an opportunity arose. Anything would suffice. Anything would do.
I visualized it, the steps I'd take to open fire, and I realized that the shards of glass on the ground between me and the door could provide them with a half-second of warning. Slowly, carefully, I began brushing the shards aside, keeping my ears peeled for some clue about a key distraction.
"Survival of the fittest, it sounds so tidy, but it's really hundreds of thousands of years of brutish, messy, violent incidents, billions of events that you'd want to avert your eyes from if you were to see them in person. And that's a large part of what's shaped us into what we are. But we wear masks, we pretend to be good, we extend a helping hand to others for reasons that are ultimately self-serving, and all the while, we're just crude, pleasure-seeking, conniving, selfish apes. We're all monsters, deep down inside."

Again, one of those pauses that suggested something was going on that was visual and out of sight, rather than something I could overhear. Jack offered a dry chuckle. "Did that hit home?"
"I'm… not that kind of person. Not a monster. I'd kill myself before I became like that."
"But you see how you could be like us. It wouldn't even be very hard. Just… let go of those rules of yours. You'd get everything you ever wanted."
"Not family."
"Yes, family." Bonesaw cut in.
"You guys kill each other. That's not family."
"You're derailing our conversation, Bonesaw," Jack chided the girl. "Amelia, when I say you could have everything you ever wanted, I'm telling you that you could live free of guilt, of shame, you could have your sister by your side, no more doubts plaguing you, no more feeling down. Haven't you laid in bed at night, wondering, praying for a world where you could have something like that?
I'm telling you that you can have those things, and I promise you that the transition from being who you are now to being who you could be would be much quicker than you suspect."
"No." The defiance was half-hearted.
"Amelia, you could let yourself cut loose and love life for the first time since you were young."
And just like that, her resistance crumbled. "I've never felt like that. Never felt carefree. Not since I could remember. Not even when I was a kid."
"I see. From your earliest memory, what was that? In Marquis's home? No? Being taken home by the heroes and heroines that would become your false family? Ah, I saw that change in expression. That would be your earliest memory, and you found yourself struggling to adjust to your new home, to school and life without your supervillain daddy. By the time you did figure those things out, you had other worries. I imagine your family was distant. So you struggled to please them, to be a good girl, not that it ever mattered. There was only disappointment."
"You sound like Tattletale. That's not a compliment."
"My ability to read people is learned, not given, I assure you. Most of the conclusions I've come to have been from the cues you've given me. Body language, tone, things you've said. And I know these sorts of things and what to look for because I've met others like you. That's what I'm offering you. A chance to be with similar people for the first time in your life, a chance to be yourself, to have everything you want, and to be with me. I suspect you've never been around someone who actually paid attention to you."
"Tattletale did. And Skitter."
I startled at that.
"I meant on a long-term basis, but let's talk about that. I imagine they were telling you 'No, you aren't. You can be good.'"
"Yeah."
"But you didn't believe them, did you, Amelia? You've spent years telling yourself the opposite. You're a bad person, you're destined to be bad, by circumstance and blood. And even though you didn't believe them, you'll believe me when I tell you no, you aren't a good person, but that's okay."

Amy, if you trust this guy's babbling and give up in front of him, allowing him to win, I'm gonna stop liking him because I don't like weak and pathetic people. Be like your father and show him that he have no power over you because he's talking nonsense in order to break you. There are PLENTY of genuinely good people in the world, more than genuinely evil people, he only tells you this to manipulate you and have your wrapped around his little finger, maybe he doesn't believe himself in what he's saying. Or maybe he believe because he's an extremely misanthrope madman who think about himself that he can see the true face of humanity. Disgusting asshole, humanity is not nearly half as bad as you paint it. I don't usually trust people, but I know that there are a lot of them who would do anything to help their fellow people in need. I love humanity per general, unlike this crazy asshole who deserve a bullet right in the center of his forehead before he'll convince Amy to take the most idiotic decision in her life. Come on, Skitter, stop listening at this verbal shit and DO SOMETHING.

"It's not."
"You say that, but you believe me when I say it."
There was another pause where Panacea didn't venture a response.
"Isn't it unfair? Through no fault of your own, the blood in your veins is the blood of a criminal, and that's affected how your family looks at you. You've been saddled with feelings that aren't your fault, and doomed to a life without color, enjoyment or pleasure. Don't you deserve to follow your passions? A decade and a half of doing what others want you to do, doing what society wants you to do, haven't you earned the right to do what you really desire, just this once?"
"That's not really that convincing," Panacea spoke, but she didn't sound assertive.
"I know. So I'll offer you a deal. If you indulge yourself, we'll surrender."
"What?"
"I won't even make you do it now. Just look me in the eye, and honestly tell me you'll do it. Drop all of the rules you've set yourself. I don't care what you do after, you can wipe your sister's memories, you can kill yourself, you can run away or come with us. And your side wins."
"Aren't we winning anyways?"
"Up for debate. I'm really quite thrilled with the current situation. Very enjoyable, and we've certainly made an impact."
"This deal is a trap. You'll make me do it and then you'll kill me."
"I could, but I won't. Do you really have anything to lose by trying? If I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you regardless of what you say or do. Three and a half words: 'I'll do it', and we leave the city."

I almost stood right then, to open fire before she made a decision one way or another. I had to convince myself to wait, that no matter what they were saying, they wouldn't leave right this instant.
Then I heard the sound of glass crunching in time with someone's footsteps.
With the length of time I'd waited for an opportunity, I was going to take what I could get. My heart pounded, my hands shook even as I gripped the gun as hard as I could, but I let out a slow breath as I drew myself smoothly to a standing position and stepped into the doorway, pointing the gun through the window frame in the door.
They hadn't heard me move. It left me a second to take in the scene and make sure I was shooting the right people.
They were in a music room that had been arranged with seats on a series of ascending platforms, backed by windows that had exploded inward, scattering the area with glass shards. At the bottom 'floor', there was a podium waiting for the teacher. Jack was walking up the steps to approach a girl. I knew he was Jack because he was the only male present. He was wreathed in thin white smoke, wore a light gray t-shirt marked with blood stains and black jeans tucked into cowboy boots. A thick leather belt had a variety of knives, including a butcher's cleaver, a stiletto and a serrated blade.
His teammate Bonesaw, was standing in the corner of the room just to my right. I could see the edge of a dress, an apron with tools and vials in the pocket, long blond hair curled into ringlets, and that same shroud of smoke around her, moving out to fill the room. The rest of her was obscured by the wall to my right and the shelves that stood behind the podium. It put her in an awkward spot for me to shoot. If I'd known she was there, I would have crawled over to the door at that end, gunned her down at point-blank.
Panacea stood at the far end of the room, at the highest point. She had brown hair that was blowing slightly with the breeze that flowed in through the glassless windows behind her, topped with a flat top cap. Freckles covered her face, and she was dressed in a tank top and cargo pants. More than anything else, she wore a look of fear on her face that marked her as the victim, not the threat.
And process of elimination meant the thing beside her was her sister. I would have called it a coffin, but it was clearly made of something living. It resembled a massive growth of flesh that had been shaped into a vague diamond shape, gnarled with horny callous and toenail-like growths that protected it and reinforced it at the edges. On the side closest to me, a girl's face was etched into an oversized growth of bone. It was unmoving, decorative, with locks of long wavy hair that wrapped around the sides of the diamond. The 'sister' floated a foot over the floor.

Oh, fuck, God, no..........NO.....JUST NO!!! Amy turned Glory Girl into a monster. A floating flesh coffin. Why? Why you did that, Amy? You don't seem like you lost your minds, you seem pretty sane, only emotionally weaker and weaker. Why, why you did that to Victoria? Ok, I'm not going to judge Amy until I'll know the whole truth. Maybe she lost control over her powers. Or maybe this is her way of healing Victoria and protecting her against further exterior menaces. Maybe that flesh coffin have healing properties and she have to stay like this for a while until all the Crawler's acid will be extracted from her body and her affected cells will be completely regenerated. Maybe she'll be ok, Amy must know what she's doing, as long as she still have her mind unbroken.

It was so startling to see that I nearly forgot what I was doing. I drew in a short breath, then let slow breath out as I aimed the gun at Jack and squeezed the trigger.
I'd mentally planned to unload the gun on Jack and Bonesaw, but I'd forgotten about the recoil. At the same time Jack was struck down, my arm jerked up, and my mental instruction to fire nonetheless carried through. The second bullet hit the ceiling.
I whipped the door open and turned to my right to fire on Bonesaw, but my arm was numb, and her reflexes were sharp. She was already opening a door at the other corner of the classroom before
I could shoot, making her way into the hallway.
I had a split second to decide if I should chase her or go after Jack. I glanced at Panacea, saw her staring. As if the eye contact snapped her out of a daze, she lunged toward Jack, one hand outstretched. She stopped dead in her tracks as he lashed out blindly with the knife. Reversing direction, she went for her sister instead.
Jack hadn't been incapacitated. Aside from the impact of the gunshot, he didn't even seem wounded. He was on his feet in a flash, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees to face me, his knife in motion.
I ducked back through the door, the knife delivering a glancing blow to my back. It failed to penetrate my costume.
Oddly enough, moving into the hallway and putting my back to the wall made me feel like I'd committed to fighting Jack, even if I might have been in a better position to go after Bonesaw.
"Wake," I heard Panacea speak. She said something else that I missed.
I felt a jolt, but it wasn't physical. It shook me on an emotional level. My voice abandoned me, not that I wanted to speak. I felt as if I stood on the very edge of the grand canyon and any movement, even one to step back onto solid ground, was guaranteed to send me falling to certain death.

The levitating construct of flesh slammed through the door and the door-frame that Bonesaw had used to make her exit. The mask of bone drew upward like an opened lid, to reveal a clear sphere, containing vitreous fluid and a teenage girl with blond hair.
Her eyes were open, but she looked half asleep, her hair fanned out around her, floating in fluid that seemed thicker than water. Her arms were outstretched, but her hands and lower body were hidden by the meat that surrounded her. The edges of the shell that were unfolding around her were curved forward like the horns of a bull.
If the sister had come after me, I wouldn't have been able to fight back. Like a deer in the headlights, I stood there, unable to think or compel my body to move.
She rotated in mid-air slowly, as if getting her bearings. As ponderously as she had moved one moment, she went tearing after Bonesaw in the next, slamming through walls as momentum carried her too far and as she turned a corner too tight and sheared through the drywall, tile and window frames.
I could hear Bonesaw laughing with childlike glee as she fled.
"Not smart, not smart, either of you," Jack chastised us. "See, with Victoria gone, you've left me here with a hostage."
I stood with my back to the wall, gun in hand. Ten bullets in here, four spent, if I'd counted right. I'd always sort of rolled my eyes at how movies treated guns and counting bullets, but it was harder than I'd thought. The shock and disorientation that came with firing a gun tended to disrupt even basic arithmetic. I couldn't remember how many times I'd fired during the fight in the parking lot.
"I've been turning every microbe that touches my skin into an airborne plague, Jack," Panacea spoke, her voice low. "You should be dead now."
"And me?" I called out, feeling a pang of alarm.
"I didn't know you were there. You should be dead too. Sorry."
"A benefit of little Bonesaw's smoke," Jack answered. "If I recall correctly, it's something of a safeguard in case she accidentally deploys a concoction she hasn't immunized herself or the rest of our team against. The fact that it works against bugs and small rodents is a side benefit, rather than the intent. Bonesaw's work has made us members of the Nine more or less immune to disease anyways."
"And the gunshot?"

Fucking Jack being OP asshole, immune at bullets and Amy's plagues. This guy is one HARD to kill, that's for sure. I doubt that Theo will ever have a chance against him unless he'll get a power similar with his fathers but without being limited by Manton Effect. For example, to make metal grow directly inside Jack's body, one every surface of his organs. That would be FUN to watch in action, let's see if Bonesaw's safeguards can do something to protect a body filled completely with metal.

Why do I have a feeling that both Jack and Bonesaw will be very happy if Theo's powers will work like this, considering this scary ability as a challenge?

With these freaking nuts, one should expect at everything. Glory Girl is alive (I still think that fluid have healing properties) and she fled after Bonesaw. Good, Bonesaw, hope she'll catch you and hurt you as best as she can.

Sorry, but I have to stop now. I want to keep reading but I'm pretty tired. I'll continue tomorrow.

Good night and sleep well, my understanding friends.

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

Sometimes frustrated.

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Totally not four rats in a trench coat

Sometimes frustrated.

Sometimes frustrated.

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

Sometimes frustrated.

SPACE!

Sometimes frustrated.

Anti-nihilist(maybe).

SPACE!

Not a sphere

Totally not four rats in a trench coat