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

blackarrow · Aug 25, 2018

AmbarGriss said:
I think you are taking this story waaay too seriously.

I don't care if rafuki22 takes the story too seriously. He can see and understand this story in which ways he wants to see and understand. Also, I'm very ok with his comments, his questions, his critics, his contribution at this thread. I like talking with him, he's smart and have some insightful POV, forcing me to think deeply before replying him from my own POV. The only problem I have with him right now is that he spoiled me with Lisa's brother being dead and now I just can't stop thinking what Lisa did to cause his death. Its very possible that she triggered right after this unfortunate incident (I hope that it was only an accident and not something more).

Luckenzio · Aug 25, 2018

rafuki22 said:
No grudges, but you know how internet discussions go.
Ahhhhh, and when the undersiders broke the unwritten rules? assume it, you are defending the undersiders, you can not judge them because you are partial, from the point of view of piggot she does not know what we know, in case you did not know,she did not say that they should not have defended, she did not imply either,typical tactics of misinterpreting words and giving them a different or worse meaning, not to mention that you seem to be saying that the undersiders have no guilt whatsoever, using the hatred of piggy parahumans as an excuse, and all the times that the undersiders have been hypocritical and those moments where "they had to do what had to be done"(crimes) why did not they have another option? And if they did not have an option, what makes you think that the heroes had it?
Piggot is right, when the line is crossed? Where is the line to start?White?gray?...black?
By the way, skitter is a hypocrite, if you refuse to see it for your "empathy" and "favoritism" good for you.

You see? You tend to assume things.
I'm not saying you're wrong, you just assume things without thinking, Sarah would have left if she had a good family? Even with the death of her brother occurring, she would have search comfort in her parents, right?

Putting the life of a girl for the life of a city?Not to mention that you are asking to lobotomize and control dragon through its archenemies, I can see the ideology of "the end justifies the means" in you ... I am so proud.
As I said, nothing personal, maybe these are my true thoughts, maybe not, but you know, I want to unbalance you a bit, play with your preconceptions and emotions, see how you respond, things like that.

Actually putting the life of a girl over a city its not an "end justify the means" ideology. End justify the means its more akin to trying to discard your emotions to find a path towards a general optimal situation. Despite being cold and merciless in execution, its supposed to be altruistic at its core.

Putting Dinah over the city on the other hand its the complete opposite. You are sacrificing much more than what you are winning, but you cant see it because of your emotional attachment. Its an emotional response impulsed by tunnel vision. Despite being "selfish", its easily the most human and the healthiest(possibly) option.

rafuki22 · Aug 25, 2018

blackarrow said:
I DIDN'T KNOW LISA'S BROTHER DIED. Emily only asked about Lisa's brother, she didn't said that he's dead. You just SPOILED me. Besides, I'm free to speculate what I want to speculate about her parents. If they're looking her, then they're GOOD parents, ok? Bad parents won't care about their children as much as Lisa's parents care for her. My impression about everything is that Lisa is responsible somehow of her brother's death (thanks for your spoiler), she felt very guilty about everything she did and she didn't wanted to face the consequences of her actions and just ran away, leaving her house and her grieving parents. Or her parents blamed her for his death and she couldn't bear their accusations anymore. This is what I'll believe until proved otherwise. If you'll spoil me how Lisa is responsible for her brother's death, I'll be pissed, I promise. Ok.
Dinah's life MATTERS and she should be saved whatever it takes. She represents the INNOCENCE and PURITY of this story, an eternal victim who should be saved from her own HELL. I'm actually obsessed with the necessity of this child being saved. I almost share Skitter's obsession which is not very good for my mental health. :lol
Skitter is NOT a hypocrite, she never sees herself better than everyone else when she's clearly not, on the contrary, she never killed someone (even if she was so close to do that) and blamed others for killing people. The only moment when she was a hypocrite was when she judged Regent for controlling Shatterbird, even if she was the one with the plan for have Shadow Stalker kidnapped and controlled. I'm not by her side her, I'm just saying my opinion about Skitter not being an hypocrite in my eyes. But everyone are free to interpret this story and its characters how they like/want/understand.
I'm not saying that Dragonslayers should destroy Dragon. I'm saying that they should stop some non-person and non-sentient Suits otherwise Undersiders will lose against them and I don't want them to lose this fight. There are just Suits...Robots, man, they're not living beings and Dragon won't be affected directly. She'll be pissed because she'll lose more Suits, but not affected that much since she can built anytime new Suits, now with the help of Defiant.
Emily KNOWS everything about Undersiders so I'm sure she knows about their fight with Bakuda and maybe she doesn't believe what she's saying either, but she just wants to manipulate them (or try to manipulate them).
In the same manner you're by Dragon side, I'm by Undersiders side, understand? I don't judge you for your preference. Peace.

I'm sorry, I did not want to spoil you, I thought it had already been said in the interlude of Sarah.

By the way, your definition of hypocrite is missing some key details, and are not just "costumes" are suits that belong to an artificial intelligence, and probably being controlled by an AI, there is a difference.
Also, you're assuming that piggot should know more than she knows, because there were few ways that she knew what really happened between Bakuda and the undersiders.
I'm not on the dragon side, mostly, I just say that you encourage the criminal acts of the undersiders, "no matter how much damage they cause or what they do, as long as there are no deaths or collateral injuries it does not matter" <= this seems to be your philosophy.
Also, I do not say that I would not save dinah, but, if she were not such a powerful thinker, saving her would not be worth it, this is, of course, my pragmatism speaking, since you apparently identify yourself with pragmatism.
If you let your emotions take over, you are not as pragmatic as you think.

rafuki22 · Aug 25, 2018

blackarrow said:
I don't care if rafuki22 takes the story too seriously. He can see and understand this story in which ways he wants to see and understand. Also, I'm very ok with his comments, his questions, his critics, his contribution at this thread. I like talking with him, he's smart and have some insightful POV, forcing me to think deeply before replying him from my own POV. The only problem I have with him right now is that he spoiled me with Lisa's brother being dead and now I just can't stop thinking what Lisa did to cause his death. Its very possible that she triggered right after this unfortunate incident (I hope that it was only an accident and not something more).

I'm glad I did not accidentally spoil the context.
And no, I did not want to spoil you, I'm sorry.REALLY.

rafuki22 · Aug 25, 2018

Luckenzio said:
Actually putting the life of a girl over a city its not an "end justify the means" ideology. End justify the means its more akin to trying to discard your emotions to find a path towards a general optimal situation. Despite being cold and merciless in execution, its supposed to be altruistic at its core.

Putting Dinah over the city on the other hand its the complete opposite. You are sacrificing much more than what you are winning, but you cant see it because of your emotional attachment. Its an emotional response impulsed by tunnel vision. Despite being "selfish", its easily the most human and the healthiest(possibly) option.

I do not disagree, but it is not bad (means) to let a villain take advantage of a girl (let's assume that the girl is not a Thinker, because if she were, it would have to be saved) to save the city (end)?
The best option would be to kill coil.

Luckenzio · Aug 25, 2018

rafuki22 said:
I do not disagree, but it is not bad (means) to let a villain take advantage of a girl (let's assume that the girl is not a Thinker, because if she were, it would have to be saved) to save the city (end)?
The best option would be to kill coil.

It depends. Killing Coil would be the most " moral" without a doubt. It may not be the most effective however; considering the sheer amount of colateral damage that could happen. As cold as it sounds, imprisoning Dinah for the sake of the city would be the best option at long term IF the person in charge wasnt Coil. As good as Coil is, he is unfit for any kind of leadership. He is a closet psychopath with murdering urges who constantly betrays his allies. So i agree; killing him is probably the best option.

blackarrow · Aug 25, 2018

rafuki22 said:
I'm sorry, I did not want to spoil you, I thought it had already been said in the interlude of Sarah.
By the way, your definition of hypocrite is missing some key details, and are not just "costumes" are suits that belong to an artificial intelligence, and probably being controlled by an AI, there is a difference.
Also, you're assuming that piggot should know more than she knows, because there were few ways that she knew what really happened between Bakuda and the undersiders.
I'm not on the dragon side, mostly, I just say that you encourage the criminal acts of the undersiders, "no matter how much damage they cause or what they do, as long as there are no deaths or collateral injuries it does not matter" <= this seems to be your philosophy.
Also, I do not say that I would not save dinah, but, if she were not such a powerful thinker, saving her would not be worth it, this is, of course, my pragmatism speaking, since you apparently identify yourself with pragmatism.
If you let your emotions take over, you are not as pragmatic as you think.

Ok, you're forgiven

.
Yes, this is my philosophy. As long as civilians/heroes aren't hurt beyond fixing or killed then Undersiders can blow up all of the Dragon's Suits for all I care, if this is the only solution they will have to escape- MY philosophy. Buildings/robots can be replaced easily, human lives not.
First of all, Dinah is a CHILD, then a Thinker. Children always make my emotions take over before everything. They represent one of my biggest weaknesses. Even evil children make me sad and even if I might hate then, I also hope that they'll be fixed one day and saved from themselves (like in Bonesaw's case. Call me crazy but despite everything Bonesaw did/will do, even if I want her to be punished I also kind of want her to be "saved" from her own evilness and become a better person. Why? Because she's a child and children can be remodeled like a plasticine if someone put a little effort into. There is still hope for them. Evil children deserve a second chance, however I doubt that Bonesaw will ever want to change, even if she'll escape from Jack's influence. She's too fascinated with her "art" to ever see its very ugly and maleficent side). So, I want Dinah to be saved because: first she's a child, then she's an innocent human being, and the last, she's a Thinker. In this order.
I'm not pragmatic when it comes to children. I'm quite the opposite of pragmatism.

blackarrow · Aug 26, 2018

Hello, my friends from everywhere. Time to start the next Chapter and see what Undersiders and Travelers are planning to stop Dragon's Mythological Suits from capturing/tormenting Bitch, Genesis and Ballistic. I don't see many possibilities to fight some super-advanced robots created by the best AI Tinker in the world except for taking advanced upon the limitations they have (I said and I'll always say how GLAD I'm for Dragon's limitations; otherwise Undersiders would have been long time defeated/killed by a completely free to do what she wants Dragon. Hell, Skitter would have died right during the PRT souvenirs shop scene). I also wonder what they're planning to do with Emily. They can't keep her prisoner, she needs to be home to get her treatment, otherwise she'll die. I don't want her to die.

She have bad traits, yes, but she's also a character who's doing what she can for the best of the people that she's responsible for. People without powers, mind you.

She's a bigot anti-parahuman, yes, but she is still willing to work with heroic parahumans, she doesn't try to manipulate the non-powered people, turning them against parahumans, she isn't planning to create concentration camps for all parahumans, no matter if they're bad, good or people who only want to be left alone to live their lives like any normal people, despite having superpowers. She's clearly NOT a psychotic bigot like Senator Kelly or Graydon Creed from X-Men, so I can't say that she deserves to die because she's a great danger for parahumans and peace in general. She doesn't purposely let super-bad guys to escape for....reasons, like people from a super-shady organisation keep doing.

She doesn't deserve to die, I'll be upset if she'll give her last breath while in Undersiders' custody. Please, Undersiders, release her, I don't want you to have her on your collective consciences. I hope they'll take the right decision

Monarch 16.4

I was turning to leave when I was struck with a thought. "Did Bitch move to her new territory yet? I know we planned for her to relocate to the city outskirts."

"Not yet," Tattletale answered. She was tying the gag back in place. Piggot was screwing her eyes closed in disgust.
"So she's somewhere near the Trainyard."
"Yeah," Tattletale replied.
"We're going to need transportation if we're going to get there without losing too much time."
"Brooks can hotwire a car for you, show you how to start it up again when you're ready to head back," Tattletale suggested.
"No. I'm not sure it'll be able to navigate all the fenced off areas and debris that'll be in the Trainyard. Bitch hasn't been clearing the mess, as far as I know, and it wasn't easy to navigate to begin with."
"If we use the car to get there…" Grue started.
I finished his sentence for him, "We run the risk that it'll break down, run out of gas or get wrecked somewhere, stranding us and forcing us to hike across half the city to get to Ballistic's territory. Let's minimize the opportunities for stuff to go wrong."
"Beggars can't be choosers," Tattletale said.
I glanced at Piggot. "We're capes, not beggars. I was thinking about Sundancer and something like a hot air balloon, but I'm not sure how much forward acceleration you could pick up that way. But something like that. A lot of our powers operate off virtually limitless power sources. I've used my power all day, every day and I haven't been any worse for wear. Can we use that for some extra mobility while we don't have Bitch on the team?"
"You could try a James and the Giant Peach thing with us," Imp said, "Only it'd be backwards: bugs on strings and the 'bird along for the ride."
I shook my head. "My bugs would get tired. That leaves Shatterbird."
"I can only fly with one person, maybe two," Regent and Shatterbird spoke in unison.
"What if you aren't flying?" I asked.

They still keep Emily as their prisoner "sighs". They're also planning to save Bitch but they don't know how to reach Trainyard, Bitch's territory. They're going to use R Shatterbird as their means of conveyance? How? They're going to use big windows as sleighs and R Shatterbird will fly above them, using her telekinetics to control the windows-sleighs' traction? If they'll do something like that, I can say that is an admirable and super-original idea, but also pretty risky and unsafe, especially since the windows might shatter in thousands of pieces anytime. Not safe at all. Maybe if they'll use a more resistant "sleigh" filled with enough glass so R Shatterbird can control it without difficulties? That would be better. Let's see if my idea and Skitter's idea are similar.

Maybe not my best idea in retrospect.

We were putting our lives in Shatterbird's hands. Or in Regent's hands, depending on how I interpreted it. Which wasn't to say we weren't getting where we needed to be in record time.
Shatterbird had pressed and embedded glass into the wood of a door we'd taken off the hinges, and Regent, Imp and I were standing on the surface while Shatterbird flew above us, using her power to pull on the glass. With our weight resting more towards the back than the front, the door was angled upward, skimming on the surface of the road or through the shallow water of streets that were still flooded.
We had to be pushing forty or fifty miles an hour, and any time we were forced to make a turn, we inevitably went wide, sometimes bouncing off of a wall. That was without getting into the cars and debris that still covered the roads or our total lack of solid hand-holds, seats, seatbelts or brakes. I'd parceled out silk cord to grip, but they also served to emphasize how momentum swung us out to one side or another when we turned. It was easy to underestimate how fast even a lower cruising speed was when safe inside the interior of a vehicle, removed from the road by two to four feet of solid material..
Either way, we headed into the thick of the Docks. Our makeshift vehicle sped towards a chain link fence.
"Regent, fence," I warned, leaning forward to speak into his ear and make sure he could hear me.
We continued forward without slowing. Half a block away, seventy feet away…
"Fence!" I raised my voice.
Thirty feet away…
Shatterbird hit the fence with a wave of glass, knocking it down to a forty-five degree angle. Our makeshift craft lifted up fractionally and we hit the makeshift ramp, remaining airborne for only a second or two before hitting the ground and continuing forward.
"You dick," I swore.
Regent and Imp laughed and cackled.
What had I been thinking, inflicting this pair on myself?

Told you that a non-window sleigh filled with enough glass is a better and safer idea. They have one HELL OF A RIDE with Regent having a little fun on Skitter's expense. The more I read about Regent and Imp getting along so unexpected WELL, the most I'm starting to ship them more than just friends. They have some close personalities, except that Imp doesn't get bored quickly like Regent and she's not a sociopath- she actually have a lot of feelings, for her brother, for her mother, for her unborn sibling, even for her teammates. She have some mental issues too, but nothing so bad like Regent. She's the annoying rebel little devil with a heart of gold. Anyways, I kind of like their ship. Its cute, funny, unpredictable, annoying for Grue and Skitter and something...different, compared to other ships. A perfect name for it would be....Unseen Puppeteer. Yep, I like this name.

Speaking about ships, I'm thinking at a name for Legend/Arthur ship. What do you day about Arthurian Legend? I'm not so bad at finding ships names, eh?

We made our way into the Trainyard, and the ride became much bumpier as we navigated areas with overgrown grass, train tracks and piles of trash. A crash and howl informed us of our destination before my bugs did. I signaled Regent when we were close enough so he could bring the craft to a stop.

Bitch and the dogs were fighting, and there were signs the fighting had been going on for a while.
There were six dogs in the area, including Bastard, Bentley and Sirius, but only Bastard and Bentley were still fighting. Bitch, Barker and Biter had stepped up to fight, as well, with Bitch's civilian henchpersons were hiding nearby. The vet-girl was taking care of a smaller dog.
Looking at the situation, I couldn't figure out why they'd be having trouble with their opponent. Dragon's suit wasn't that large, didn't seem to have that much in the way of weapons or gear. She stood maybe eight feet tall, eight feet wide, with each arm forming roughly a third of its mass, ending in disproportionately large, squat claws.
Barker screamed, then slammed his teeth together with a clack my bugs could hear. His power turned the noise into a concussive force, erupting around the armored suit. The suit reeled, staggering back from where it stood on top of a derelict train, nearly falling. One of the dogs charged and tackled it, tearing into it with claws and teeth.
The suit hauled the dog off it, climbing to its feet in an instant. It leaped forward to close the distance to its human opponents, and Biter stepped forward to meet it, his fist swelling to five times the normal size, along with the spikes and blades he'd worked into the fabric of his glove. The suit went flying, gathering itself into a rough ball shape as it careened backwards into the side of a train.
Had we stepped in just as the fight was wrapping up?
The suit stood. That didn't surprise me. It brought its claws to either side and clawed at the side of the train, crumpling metal in its massive claws. My bugs gave me a sense of what was going on as the suit drew the metal into itself with crushing mechanisms and gears. Its torso expanded slightly as it made room for the new material, armor plates reshaped by internal mechanisms and shifted into place to patch up the worst of the damage.
I arrived on the scene, Imp and Regent only a short distance behind me. A glance showed me that Bitch, her underlings and her dogs were injured, beaten to the point that they were dirty, bruised and scraped. Her eyes widened as I approached.
"It won't," she growled the words between pants for breath, "Fucking die!"
I wouldn't have picked a brute-type machine to go up against Bitch, if I'd been in Dragon's shoes, but she'd apparently decided this would be a good matchup. Or was this Armsmaster's idea? I was put in mind of the fight at the fundraiser, him trying to not just defeat Bitch, but to beat her into submission.
Not that he was really fighting for a crowd, here.
Or was it something else? The suit could absorb metal, what would give Bitch that much trouble?
"It's drawing scrap metal into itself," I said. "Self repairing."
"I know."
"So stop it from getting the scrap metal."
"You want to fucking try?"
This wasn't good. From the moment we arrived on the scene, this suit would probably be signalling others. We couldn't be sure that Piggot's order to stand down would still be in effect for the other suits, so we had to anticipate reinforcements. Except this suit seemed to be made to be durable, to stall and wear us down. It wouldn't be easy to take this down in the limited time we had.
Which was it? The Melusine? The whatchamacallit-Nidhug hybrid? Or was it the Azazel, presumably designed to take on the Nine, with defeating the Undersiders as a secondary design goal?

I don't think is Azazel, because its a huge possibility for Azazel to be a Suit using nanotechnology, since its created by Dragon and Defiant and Defiant always used nano-technology for his weapons. Especially since its a Suit made against S9 but also against "similar menaces" like Undersiders. I have a bad feeling that Azazel will patiently wait for Skitter's arrival in her own Hive, after she'll deal with the other Suits. Unless Tattletale will do something to permanently stop the Suits, with the help of a group of professional hackers.

So, the Suit in Trainyard is basically a Regenerator, using metal around it to self repair. Its like the robot version of Crawler. No matter how much it is destroyed, it keeps regenerating. Not good. Not good at all.

"We'll try together," I said. "Regent, we need Shatterbird in here. Imp, you're backing us up. Drag the injured to safety. Did you ever take that first aid class?"

"Grue told me to, but I haven't gotten around to it."
I swore under my breath.
"Not totally my fault. Things have been kind of a mess since I joined the team. Not like there're classes or anything."
"There probably are." I watched the suit step away from the train, adjusting its shape to sort out the additional material it had absorbed into its body.
"Not like it's easy to find classes," she clarified.
"Just take care of anyone that gets hurt. I don't know how much you can do here. I think one of Bitch's henchmen is over there," I said, pointing.
"Okay," Imp retreated.
"I'm telling you," Bitch growled the words, "Can't fight it. It doesn't die."
"We'll try. There's got to be a way. Barker, Biter, you two okay?"
"Hurt," Biter said.
Barker nodded, "Throat's sore. Keep knocking it down, it keeps getting back up."
"One or two more tries," I said. "We hit it with everything we've got. Bitch, which dogs are least hurt?"
"Bentley and Bastard. Had a few more I was sending in, but they're hard enough to order around when something isn't hurting them."
"We'll need their help, then."
"Bastard's not trained enough."
I glanced at the wolf cub. He was five or six times his usual size. He'd grown rapidly in the past few weeks, but it still meant he was small. His mutation seemed different from the other dogs. Was there a whole other department of changes with various subcategories of the wolf breed?
The suit raised one hand, and a chain fired out, a grappling hook on the end. We threw ourselves out of the way before it could catch any of us.
"Keeps doing that," Barker muttered. His voice was gravelly. "Trying to tire us out. Wear us down."
"Let's avoid giving it another chance. Longer range powers first, everyone else close in."
I hadn't even finished talking before Shatterbird was hurling the glass-coated door into the suit. She followed up with a veritable tide of glass shards, pulling them from debris and the edges of the street. The suit staggered back, putting it closer to the train she had just harvested scrap metal from.
"Keep it away from anything metal!" I reminded them.
Easier said than done. The area was a fenced in yard with railroad tracks, rusted train cars and trash that ranged from sign posts to disused trash cans. There was metal to spare.
I was limited in my options. Bugs wouldn't hurt this thing's metal body. That left me the less stellar option of fighting it like I had Mannequin.
Barker shouted three times in short succession before bidding the resulting clouds of smoke to detonate violently. The suit shielded itself with its arms, leaving it defenseless as Bentley flanked and charged it from one side. It sprawled, landing face down, and reached over to grab two rails from the train track. In one motion it rose to its feet and hauled two lengths track out of the ground. Each of the rails bent and folded as they were absorbed into the suit, churned up by grinders and more complex devices.
Bentley charged again, but the suit swung both rails simultaneously to catch the dog in mid-air and hurl him to one side. Bentley was on his feet in a second, getting his paws under him and lunging for the suit before it could turn to face him, savaging the suit's metal exterior with claws and teeth.
My bugs began to encircle the suit. The silk had enough areas to catch on, and my bugs were finding openings to crawl within, but I couldn't find much in the way of stuff to interfere with or attack. The suit's interior was hot, more so as my bugs drew closer to the very center, to the point that my bugs died if they got too far inside. Everything was solidly made; wires had chain mesh protecting the insulation, pistons and valves were sealed and reinforced, with more delicate technology presumably contained within cases and covers. There was nothing for my bugs to get into.
Using silk to bind the main body wouldn't do anything. Spider silk had strength on par with steel, but this was an armored suit capable of tearing railroad tracks from the ground and crushing them in one hand. A material as strong as steel wouldn't accomplish anything against a machine that could rend metal.
I'd have to play this smarter. I used cords of silk to seal valves shut or bind them in an open position where I could, and focused the rest of my efforts on more strategic deployments, forming cords as big around as my arm. The suit's arms and legs would be free to move, but my goal was more along the lines of restricting its movements.
Biter used the metal 'bear trap' jaw-guard in combination with his ability to distort parts of his body to large sizes, clamping down on the suit's hand. He had to hurl himself back and out of the way to avoid the suit's retaliatory attack. As he climbed to his feet, he spat out two fingers and a section of the suit's hand. I hurried to send my swarm after the discarded parts, using silk and the cumulative strength of the swarm to haul the bits away.
Biter hit the suit twice with enlarged hands and then backed off as Bentley hurled himself into the fray, catching hold of the suit's other arm and hauling on it with all the strength afforded by his muscular forelimbs, neck, jaw and shoulders. He struggled, strained, to tear the arm from its housing.
The suit fought to keep its feet beneath it, leaning hard to one side to compensate for the two-ton bulldog's weight hanging off its arm. It used its free, damaged hand to grab the dog by the scruff of the neck and flung it hard to one side.
Shatterbird hurled a wave of glass-encrusted debris at the suit. Not one second after the suit was bludgeoned by the trash cans, wooden planks and pallets, a second wave caught it from behind, striking its legs out from beneath it.
Lying on its back it reached for us and fired another grappling hook. With the speed it was moving, it looked like it could have caved in someone's ribs, but we each managed to get out of the way. Some of the people in Bitch's group were moving slower, their reflexes and mobility suffering due to their fatigue.
Okay, this wasn't easy, but it didn't seem as impossibly hard a fight as some of the other suits, either. It was just a question of keeping up the onslaught, keeping the suit from gathering too much metal for self-repair and hoping that the suit didn't get any reinforcements. With luck, the other suits would be either on standby due to Piggot's orders or they would be occupied with Trickster, Sundancer and Grue. Not that it would be a good thing if they were fighting, but it would at least mean we got out of here okay.
The suit struggled to its feet, using its arms to shield itself from two more shouts from Barker and a barrage from Shatterbird, then stopped short as the cord of silk I'd bound around its neck pulled taut. The other end was wound around one of the coupling rods that stretched between the wheels of one rusted train. I'd worried the coupling rod would come loose, but the elasticity of the silk combined with the durability and sheer thickness of it meant it didn't snap. The suit was pulled off-balance, giving Biter and Bentley a chance to close in, hammer it into the ground and thrash it.
I glanced at Bitch, saw her mouth set in a grim line.
The suit fought its way free, and Bitch whistled for Bentley to back up. I could see how it was mangled, metal torn and rent. Yes, it had displayed some self-repair technology, but every part of it was a ruined mess. I didn't want to underestimate Dragon's work, but-
Hot steam hissed out from the gaps in the suit, seconds before it turned itself inside out. The parts on the exterior folded out and were absorbed into the suit's interior, new components emerged from within and locked into place. They still smoked from the heat of being forged and reforged in the heart of the machine.
The suit's joints shifted position as it settled into a quadruped stance.
I recognized it, now. It didn't have missile launchers, and it was a fraction smaller than it had been, but it was the same suit
Dragon had used when I'd first seen her. The suit she'd used against Leviathan. That suit had also peeled apart to reveal a lesser suit beneath. Presumably it had possessed the same self repair capability and the ability to do what this suit had done, but hadn't had the chance. Except I wasn't even sure how to define or process what I'd just seen. It was such an overhaul that I was left grasping for a word to explain it. Reincarnation?
It was easy enough to picture. Any time the suit took enough damage, it reforged itself into a different shape with the reserve components deep inside its body, or it shed its outer layer, ensuring that it was always in pristine fighting condition. Give it an opportunity and it harvested metal for raw materials, and it would keep going until its battery ran out.
With the kind of stuff a tinker like Dragon could make, cold fusion reactors and self-sustaining energy sources, that battery could have one hell of a long life.
Either way, it wasn't a new model. That meant it wasn't the Azazel suit Piggot had told us about.
"You could have explained," I said.
"I did," Bitch answered, glowering at the smoking suit. "I said it won't fucking go down."
"You could have explained why."
"I don't understand why!"
The reforging process had killed every bug I had on the thing, and it had burned through the silk cord I'd leashed it with. I was left wondering what the black market price would be for something like Armsmaster's EMP device. Something that would serve as a get-out-of-a-fight-with-a-tinker-card.
Tinkers had so many options that they brought to the table, a crazy synergy with any teammates, and an ability to customize their approach to counter specific threats or individuals. I, on the other hand, was pretty screwed if I went up against anyone with flame powers, cold powers, electricity powers, enough durability to shrug off my bugs or a way to clear out large numbers of bugs at once. I'd managed thus far by thinking on my feet, but it sort of pissed me off that tinkers existed as the antithesis of that.
Yes, I was aware that tinkers had to put in hours upon hours of work, and that I only ever really experienced the end results of that investment. I didn't care. Whether they had vat grown monsters, clockwork lairs, impenetrable suits of armor, jetpacks and exploding guitars or programs to tell them how to win a fight, tinkers were a fucking pain in the ass.

Skitter just confirmed what I always said, that Tinkers are fucking OP as hell. They're the best, whatever they're doing. They work hard, they're ambitious, they have great ideas and the results of their work are simply amazing, amazingly good or bad, depend of each Tinker. They're versatile with their powers and if they're also good battle strategies on the top of everything, anyone who go against them is pretty fucked, more or less. Mannequin wan't a good battle strategist, not at all, otherwise his foes wouldn't have defeated him so many times in a row. On the other side, Defiant is a good strategist, but his own arrogance was his biggest foe, losing fight after fight because of it. Bonesaw is an excellent strategist (the best one so far when it comes to Tinkers) and her enemies had pure luck to survive her+ the immaturity of her age pushed her to make some almost capital mistakes (like when she was eager to see Grue triggering for the second time or she enraged Parian). Dragon is also a good strategist and only her limitations stop her from being freaking dangerous for people she fights against. Now I'm trying to imagine how much good (or bad) Dragon can do if nothing will limit her free will. I'm both very curious and afraid of that moment.

So, this Suit can not only self-repair, but can adapt to any attack against it. Barker and Biter are BOSSES in this fight. I expected them to be badass, but not that badass.

Any idea how to destroy it, Skitter? You're the battle commander with the ideas, after all.

"New plan," I announced. "We hit it hard enough to slow it down and then we scram."

"You want to run?" Bitch asked.
"We don't have a choice."
"We do," she said, still glowering at the suit. "We gotta kill this thing sometime anyways, so you come up with a plan like you usually do, we'll make it happen, and I won't have to give up territory to this armor asshole."
I stared at her, trying and failing to process how she was looking at the situation. Then it dawned on me. This was why Dragon and Armsmaster had pit this suit against her. It wasn't that it countered her power, exactly. It was that it was set up to work against her stubborn nature. With the way her mind worked, she couldn't back down from a fight she subconsciously felt like she was winning. It didn't matter that we were losing in the long run, she was focused on the fact that we could do damage, and walking away would be a forfeit.
Barker was screaming a long series of invectives at the suit, detonating them. With four legs solidly on the ground, it wasn't budging, and Barker's shouts weren't doing much to the armor.
"Look at it this way," I said, trying to stay calm, "We just defeated it. Heck, every time you've forced it to change like that, that's been a win for you. How many times was that?"
"Four."
"Four times, you've kicked its ass. If you walk away, that's five wins total and one loss, if you can even call that a loss. But we can't afford to stay much longer, or one of your dogs is bound to get hurt."
As if to give evidence to my statement, Bentley howled as he grappled with the suit, trying to tear into its neck while the suit attempted to wrestle him down to the ground. Biter leaped onto the machine's back, his hands with the spiked knuckles worked into the gloves growing larger so he could tear the armor plates away. Bentley joined in, setting his teeth at the lower part of the armored suit's 'spine', for lack of a better word.
Her eyes narrowed. "We run?"
"We have to stop it from following first. One more time, guys! Regent, stand ready! We need as much glass as you can spare!"
The suit turned our way. Three masters, standing in the back lines while we sent our bugs, dogs and lunatic supervillain thrall into the fray.
It began to glow, steaming, and Biter virtually yelped as he threw himself off of its back. Bentley was slower to react, but he fell back, shaking his head violently as flesh sizzled around his muzzle.
We backed up a few paces as it advanced one step. It whipped its head up until it almost pointed to the sky, then opened its mouth. Blue flame streamed over our heads to pool behind us, cutting off our retreat. We had to scramble for cover before any droplets or sparks landed on us. I wasn't sure if it was flame at a temperature I wasn't used to seeing, if it was a liquid accellerant that just happened to be on fire or if it was plasma, but I didn't want to touch it and find out the particulars.
All of us, dogs, Barker and Biter included, headed inside a building to seek further cover. The structure rumbled as the suit climbed the side and settled on the roof. The A.I.s liked high places, it seemed.
"Need to hit it hard," I said, my voice pitched low so the suit wouldn't overhear. "One good hit."
"We don't have one good hitter," Imp said. I turned my head to see her crouching by the vet and one wounded dog. "Maybe Shatterbird, but everyone else is about a lot of littler hits."
"We need one good hit from someone who isn't Shatterbird," I clarified.
"Can't," Biter said. "Limit to how big I can grow myself before I do permanent damage."
"Define permanent damage."
"Stretch marks, scarring, permanent aches and pains. I have some in my midsection, all day, every day, it hurts."
"Okay," I said. "Barker?"
"I can't hurt the fucker."
"You screamed something like three times, then detonated that smoke you make whenever you make noise. Can you do it more?
More shouts, louder?"
"At my limit. Probably not."
"Bentley's hurt," I said, "What about Bastard?"
"He'll probably listen to me, but he might attack anyone else. He's too dangerous when big."
"And that suit's dangerous too. In case you haven't noticed, it's either trying to beat us to a pulp so it can drag us into custody or it's going to burn us alive. We have to use one of your dogs, and Bastard's in the best shape. We have to use him."
Bitch frowned, "How?"
I told her. "You've taught him to fetch?"
She nodded.
"Fetch something big, then," I said. "Wait until my signal, hit him as hard as you can. Everyone else, let's run for it."
I could see Bitch tense. Her henchwoman, the vet, stood and nervously circled around the edge of the room to join us, giving Bitch a bit of space.
"You're leaving me behind."
"We're counting on you," I said. "Wait for my signal, then come with Bastard. More damage you can do, the better."
All together, we bolted, Bentley following immediately behind us. I could feel the Dragon suit reorienting to face us, felt it angle its head before it spewed another stream of liquid fire.
In a residential area? This wasn't an occupied area, but… well, the suit might know that. It might be another reason it was deployed here.
"Hard right!" I shouted. We turned to head for a nearby alleyway before the liquid fire even touched ground.
The suit leaped, and I grabbed Imp's wrist, hauling her out of the way. It landed a short distance from us, then barreled through our group, sending Biter, Barker and the vet-in-training sprawling.
Controlled movements. Everything it's doing, it's all calculated. Even the more dangerous attacks were geared to hold back just enough to hurt, not to kill. Even the hurt was fairly minimal. If Biter had still been on the suit's back when it turned red-hot, I was willing to bet it would have shaken him off to avoid giving him terminal burns. There had to be something about that I could use.
Trouble was, I wasn't sure when or where the suits drew the line. I couldn't trust that they'd follow the rules enough that I could offer my own life in the bargain, much less anyone else's.
I signaled Bitch, and she was out of the building in a second. Bastard was as large as I'd ever seen him, and there was something about his appearance… he looked less wrong than the others. The spikes and ridges of bone that lined his body weren't asymmetrical, and there seemed to be more art to the design. Drool flew out of the corners of his mouth as he bounded forward, fangs clamped around a wooden post.
The suit was halfway through turning around to face them when Bastard drove the end of the post into its stomach. It skidded, sparks flying as its claws dug into the pavement for traction.
"Pull it free!" I shouted. I didn't wait for her to follow through before calling out the next order, "Regent, fill the hole!"
Bitch hauled on Bastard's chain and he followed the direction, pulling back, the post still clamped in his mouth. When it came loose, it revealed a rent in the armor's side, far less empty space than I'd hoped, and a dislodged joint where the leg met the pelvis.
Shatterbird called forth a stream of glass, shoving it into the hole. I didn't need to give the next order. I realized she was using her power more through my bugs than any other sign, the telltale high-pitched noise that was above my human limits. A second later, the suit's rear legs lost their traction on the ground. Its lower body collapsed.
The suit began struggling for footing. It was still operational. I swore under my breath, still backing away.
Shatterbird moved one arm, and the suit slid a few feet in that direction. She had a hold on the glass. More forcefully, she pushed it into the nearest building, then dragged it across the alleyway to slam it into the opposite wall.
She repeated the process two more times before the suit tried a counterplan. It began to reshape itself, glass shards pouring out of the openings as pieces slid in and out. A third form, something airborne.
Shatterbird slammed it into a wall before it was done reshaping. The fallen glass shards levitated into the air to find new nooks and crannies to slide into.
The suit was hot, naturally heating up as part of the reincarnation or reformation process. I watched as glass melted, running into holes and slats in the armor.
Shatterbird pushed again. The suit barely moved. She wasn't so adept at moving molten silicon.
We continued backing down the alley. The suit raised its head, preparing to cut off our retreat with another pool of flame.
In her second jousting run, Bitch lanced the thing through the base of the neck. Fire spilled down around it, setting the post aflame, and the attack was stalled.
She wheeled Bastard around and shouted, "That's six fucking wins to one! Go!"
We ran. I maneuvered my swarm behind me to watch for its approach, felt it step forward and then collapse, its legs giving way.
Even the forelegs? Okay, that was interesting.
The glass. It had melted, and it was cooling in the lower recesses, farthest from the body's core.
I could have told Bitch she'd beat the suit, that we might have defeated it a hundred percent, but I kept my mouth shut. Didn't need her acting on what might be a false assumption. If it freed itself, found a way of reconfiguring where all of the glass-affected areas were contained, or if it simply abandoned its legs in favor of a smaller form… too many possibilities. Better to leave it and cross our fingers.
Damn tinkers. What the hell was Dragon's specialty? The ability to make stuff without half the time other tinkers would need? So many different suits, so many different projects and tasks, and it rarely interconnected, if ever.

So, this Suit is clearly invincible, no matter how much they'll beat it up. It always returns, stronger than during the previous battles. Dragon, Defiant, you devious motherfuckers, you created this Suit knowing that Bitch will never give up at a fight if she knows that she can win. She wins, the Suit returns, she wins against, the "reincarnated" Suit attacks again and so on until Bitch will be too tired to fight anymore and will surrender. Give up, everyone, the only solution to escape without surrending is to run away. This won't be an act of cowardice, but the most logical thing someone in your situation should do.
Skitter, Dragon's specialty is to be the BEST Tinker in the world. Knowing how OP some of Tinkers usually are, then Dragon is the most OP of all Tinkers. She can do anything she puts her electronic mind into. If she wants to build robot versions of Undersiders with all their powers intact, be sure that she'll do that in a short time. She's awesome like this.

We ran two or three blocks before we had to stop. Shatterbird sent glass shards into a nearby door, then tugged it free. A sled for Regent and Imp.

With some coaxing, I got the vet-trainee to climb onto Bentley's back. The other henchman, the guy, climbed up behind me. Barker approached Bastard, and received a mean growl in response. We searched for an option for Barker and Biter before Regent and Shatterbird offered another door.
We made good time on our way to Ballistic's lair. We'd planned to arrive by dusk, but the sun wasn't even setting.
The others weren't there. We double checked, then mobilized to find them, spreading out. With reluctance, I drew my relay bugs from the interior of my shoulderpad. I felt a twinge of disappointment as I handled them, gently passing them on to dragonflies that could carry them. They were dying.
Panacea hadn't given the relay bugs a digestive system, and in my haste to save Atlas from a slow death by starvation, I'd neglected to pay attention to them. It wouldn't have mattered anyways, probably, because Grue had only had so much time to work with.
The dragonflies sent my relay bugs out so I could keep in touch with the others as we searched for Grue, Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic. Bugs were tough, natural survivors. I knew that cockroaches could survive lengthy periods of time without heads, that other bugs could be frozen solid and thawed and be little worse for wear. They subsisted on relatively little food considering their body size, and the relay bugs had held on this long with an inability to eat at all. Their physiology wasn't quite the mess that Atlas's was, and they retained some basic hibernation instincts, defaulting to a near-immobile state. It was a struggle to even get them to extend my power's range for me.
I found the next dragon suit before I found the others, and I immediately knew it for what it was. It had to be Azazel.

Azazel's apparition- EXPECTED. Azazel's apparition in Cars Cemetery Lair -UNEXPECTED. A possible battle of strength and wits between Skitter and Azazel- PRICELESS.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

blackarrow · Aug 28, 2018

Hello, buddies. After the short win against Crawler Suit/the failure to defeat it permanently, its time for another Mythological Suit, Azazel, the Fallen Angel, to make its appearance and challenge Undersiders to a fight. The most powerful Suit, the love child of Dragon and Defiant, against the group of teenage villains that Dragon and Defiant believe that they're as dangerous and scary as S9. I won't be surprised if- right in the middle of the fight- Azazel to shut down completely, letting Undersiders go without any further attacks. Because I'd know that someone made her job, using her wits (and a little help from outside her group) to eliminate the threat of the Suits [muffled Tattletale's laugh being heard in the distance] [muffled Dragon's cry being also heard in the distance].

Ok, I'll be honest. Since Dragon is the first AI that I ever liked in a work of fiction (she's not among my favorite characters but I like her and I admire her efforts to make the world a better place for parahumans and non-powered people alike), I'll feel kind of sorry for her if she'll lose her Suits to Tattletale and/or Dragonslayers. I'll feel sorry for Defiant too, they worked hard to create these robots whose main role is to fight against villains and protect innocents.

But, I'm by Undersiders' side this time -I have to be- so...sorry, you two, but you have my word that I'll cheer for you when you'll fight S9. I'll be 100% by your side to kick their ass through the entire multiverse.

Alright, let's start this goddamn fight Monarch 16.5

If I was remembering right, the Slaughterhouse Nine had introduced themselves to their prospective members roughly two weeks ago. I couldn't be sure what had happened, but Piggot had alluded to the idea that Armsmaster had banded together with Dragon.

Two weeks, and they'd built this.

Its their LOVE CHILD, Skitter, please, be more understanding. If you don't get how two Tinkers of different sexes can have a child, I'm going to explain you right now. So, when the mommy Tinker have a specialty, she builds stuff related to her specialty, then daddy Tinker builds other stuff related to his specialty, they both combine their stuff into a bigger stuff and...VOILA...their child is born.

Now you understand how the things are working with Tinkers and reproduction? Leaving this childish joke aside, I seriously think that Dragon and Defiant can have a child together, if they will ever wish for. Since Dragon can already "build" biological fetuses, it won't be hard for her to "build" an artificial uterus (this stuff already EXIST in our world- the first artificial uterus was successfully used to grew baby sheep), use artificial insemination with Defiant's sperm and....they will have a little healthy baby boy or girl. But right now, they don't have time for this, they have more stressful things to deal with than changing diapers and restless nights (they can't sleep anyway so their nights won't be exactly restless).

Gosh, I derailed a bit from the story with all the baby stuff. Sorry. Back to Skitter dealing with Azazel.

The other dragon suits had the general stylings of dragons, with claws, armor plating that resembled scales and heads or faces that resembled a reptile. In the end, though, they were still machines, and the theme was just that. A theme.

Rather than armor plates, the scales were fine, intricately detailed and arranged with a kind of natural sense to it, with denser scaling in the areas which saw the most movement, creasing and folding and heavier scales around the elbows, talons and face. There were wings, batlike, with openings at the base of each 'finger' that the membrane stretched between. The actual body was more like a lizard, but the angle of the forelimbs and shoulders resembled those of a human. When Azazel moved, its scaled exterior rippled with the shifting movements of the mechanisms underneath.
My bugs found their way inside, and I discovered it was very different from the machine we'd just fought. It wasn't sturdily built, nor was it solid. The wires and internal mechanisms weren't heavy-duty, reinforced or covered in chain mesh. They were so numerous and dense that I couldn't hope to make any headway with every bug in the city committed to the task.
It was, just going by what I could tell from my swarm-sense, a machine as intricate and multilayered as a living, organic being.
But how? It didn't make sense in terms of the timeframe. It would have taken time to make each individual, unique part with their condensed and intricate design, but he'd only had two weeks.
A thought dawned on me. It was a half-formed thought up until the moment I devoted some attention to it. Then it clicked. Tinkers had a knack, a specialty, be it a particular field of work or something they could do with their designs that nobody else could, and I knew Dragon's. She could intuit and appropriate the designs of other tinkers.
It put everything in perspective. The machines she was using, half of them drew on ideas I'd seen other tinkers put to work. The drone model had used Kid Win's antigravity generators and Armsmaster's ambient taser, the wheel-dragon might have used the same theories as the electromagnetic harness Kid Win had been packing when we attacked the PRT headquarters.
It also served to explain how she could invest the time to make the suits. If her power afforded her the brainpower and raw thinking power to understand and apply the work of other tinkers, then she could put all of her resources towards manufacturing.
Armsmaster made the base design, she appropriated it and then turned artificial intelligence or her own power to creating the necessary variations.
I could imagine how she had worked herself into the Protectorate and the Guild for just this reason. It would get her the funding and raw materials she needed. Being a member of the team would give her access to the work of the various tinker heroes, in the name of oversight and security. Add the confiscated material from criminals like Bakuda, and she had unparalleled access to other tinkers' work.
There were realizations that were kind of a 'eureka' moment, except not so much an inspiration borne of creativity or creation as being about finding that weak point, finding that way out of a corner. This wasn't one of those. This was one of the realizations I wish I hadn't had, because I could feel my own morale plummeting. If I was even close to being right, then Dragon was the incarnation of why tinkers were so dangerous.

Skitter, Dragon's specialty is to copy all other Tinkers' specialties. She can copy Bonesaw too, if she wants, and the main proof to support my affirmation is her ability to create organic/biologic stuff (fetuses-pilots). There are no limits in what she can do. If Tinkers are a powerhouse, she's their goddess. I want to see Skitter's reaction when she'll find out about the true nature of Dragon, that she herself was created by a Tinker.

Skitter will be shocked for sure then will start blame herself that she didn't see this fact before its revelation. Yes, Skitter, Tinkers are dangerous as fuck. From all Classifications, they're the most dangerous ones, followed close by Thinkers (just look at what Tattletale and Coil CAN DO) and Masters (should I specify how instantly dangerous someone who can control mind/emotions/body can be?!?). I my opinion, these 3 Classifications are something that nobody in their right mind should mess with.

Which didn't change the fact that we had to find a way to stop her or everything we'd worked for would be for nothing.

I used the relay bugs to extend my search out further, and ran into a snag. My swarm died in droves, bugs being obliterated or having half their bodies sheared off as they approached too close to what the suit was building.
It slammed one claw down, and my bugs could sense a thin rod skimming along the surface of the ground, tracing bumps and depressions. The telescoping rod extended several hundred feet, crossing from the corner of one building to the base of a wall on the other side of the street. It stopped, and there was a pause as the suit moved on. Then the rod bloomed.
There wasn't a better way to put it. It expanded, unfolded, the rod of metal peeling open like a stick of bamboo, leaves and shoots unfolding over miliseconds. The final stage, what I might call the 'flowering' was familiar enough. If I could see it, I'd describe it as a vague blur. Armsmaster had used the effect for the weapon he'd used to hack away at Leviathan, and Mannequin had been in possession of a knife with the same effect. Except these blurs were five or six feet around.
I watched as the suit scanned the area, its head sweeping right to left to survey the area before it planted two more. One extended for what must have been a tenth of a mile before it met another wall and stopped. Since I'd been watching, four streets had been rendered impassable.
What did the Undersiders and the Slaughterhouse Nine have in common? Besides our general intimidating natures and disturbing powers, we were both elusive, favoring hit and run tactics with a degree of shock and awe to keep our enemies off-balance.
Dragon and Armsmaster had decided on this as their means of attack. They would seal off our movements by erecting barriers that were the high-tech equivalent of barbed wire. Barbed wire that would turn steel into vapor.
That wouldn't stop Siberian though. What technologies had I seen that they might use against her? Or was it a technology I hadn't seen before? There were some ugly possibilities there. Something long ranged that could take him out before he could get to cover? A microscopic form of attack that could fill the air and debilitate him if he wasn't in an airtight container?
"What's wrong?" Bitch asked.
"Found it. Trying to find the others but I'm running into a bit of a snag. The suit's setting up barriers."
"The forcefield thing they sent against Sundancer?" Regent asked.
I shook my head. "I think it's the Azazel suit the Director mentioned. It's using that blurry stuff that cuts through anything, I told you about it."
"I don't remember that," Imp said.
"Just don't touch it," I told her. "Not even in a joking way. You're likely to lose your finger or your hand before you realize something's wrong."
"Uh huh."
"I thought these things were supposed to be packing nonlethal hardware," Regent said. "Blue fire and now this?"
"I don't know," I said. "The Director said these suits were supposed to go up against the Nine. You want to be as lethal as you can get. I- I'm pretty sure they're holding back, though. They could have hit us a few times and didn't. We might be able to use that, but that's testing our luck."
"What? You're thinking about a kamikaze attack?" Regent asked.
"Probably not. We don't know everything that suit could be packing in terms of devices or hardware. Especially with Armsmaster helping out. It's definitely going to have something they think can counteract Siberian, so let's rule out a brute force attack. The hedge maze it's building would hold off Hookwolf or Bonesaw's creations, and the sturdiness of the design would protect it against Jack. In terms of other tactics the Slaughterhouse Nine might use… hostages. I'd bet it's packing containment foam."
"So what do we do?"
"It's still a machine, a well made machine, but it's a machine. We can break it, given an opportunity. But our number one goal is going to be keeping it from catching us out of position and walling us in."
"We could move up to the rooftops," Regent said.
"I have a bit of a policy against doing that," I replied. "It leaves you with a shortage of escape routes."
"Doesn't sound like we'll have many anyways."
"No. But we'll worry about that when it comes up. Worst case scenario, we climb for the rooftops when it happens. The dogs are mobile, and I assume Shatterbird can lift one or two people at a time?" I asked. Regent nodded confirmation. I continued, "For now, we'll take the long way, keep our distance from it, see if we can't find the others."
I looked around, saw some nods. I glanced at Bitch. Would she see it as cowardly?
"Okay," Bitch said.
"Good. Let's leave your people behind? No use bringing them into a fight."
She nodded. I looked over my shoulder at the vet trainee and the guy, and they took that as their cue to climb down.
The remainder of us rode. Me on Bentley, Bitch on the wolf cub's back, Barker and Biter riding in tandem on one door just behind Regent and Imp on the other.
The machine was gradually taking over an area near Ballistic's territory with the disintegration 'hedges'. Going counter-clockwise around Azazel would have meant running face first into the crater Leviathan had made. Traveling the edge threatened to put us dangerously close to the suit, and with the water on one side we'd have denied ourselves one of the cardinal directions as far as escape routes went. That meant we were left with only one viable route to travel if we wanted to head further into the downtown areas; turning left and giving the suit as wide a berth as possible.
I kept one metaphorical eye on the suit as we traveled, while sweeping out with my swarm to scan for the others. Azazel was laying down more of the 'hedges', not connecting them but placing one and then winging past intersections and streets to place another two or three blocks away. I couldn't be sure what the point was. Our teammates were nowhere nearby, as far as I could tell, and the openings were wide enough that the barriers wouldn't really hamper us even if we were running straight through the area. Maybe a bit if my power wasn't informing me of where we needed to go, but even Bitch would be able to get by without too much trouble.
I couldn't shake the notion that I was missing something. Was there something about those rods that I wasn't aware of? None of the rods were any thicker around than my pinky fingers, so they didn't leave room for any real traps to be hidden inside, Armsmaster's special talent or no.
It had been too long since I rode one of the dogs. They weren't well suited for riding, and that was doubly the case with Bentley, with his broad shoulders and barrel-like chest. It forced my legs apart, and that made for an uncomfortable ride when coupled with the bouncing motion as he ran and the lingering soreness of my shoulder from the battlefield surgery Brooks had provided.
I thought about calling for a break when I noticed movement. Not Azazel. It was coming from the other direction. My heart sank.
The drone-dragon.

I was sure that Azazel will use nano-technology, which was a smart and LETHAL weapon against Leviathan and since the Suit was built by Dragon and Defiant against S9 and Undersiders, of course its using LETHAL weapons. I'm surprised that Dragon is ready to kill Skitter. I was under impression that she wants to FIND her and TALK to her, not kill her. The only one who actively tried to kill Skitter is Defiant, back when he was Armsmaster. What if he convinced Dragon that Skitter is someone so dangerous that she can't be captured alive and only death will stop her? What if Dragon listened Defiant? Or...what if he re-programmed her, removing her limits, so she now is free to do what she considers is necessary to stop villains, including killim them? I'm not sure what to say about this, if is true, but I know a certain thing: Skitter (and everyone else) are in a DEEP SHIT. I think I know why Azazel creates those nano-hedgers. To catch Undersiders in a trap so they have nowhere to run and hide from the drone-dragon. Then the drone-dragon can....ok, I should try to think in a more positive manner.

Maybe nothing bad will happen to Undersiders and I'm just scared because...Let's see what will happen further, shall we?

"Incoming!" I called out, using my bad arm to point in the general direction of the approaching suit. It was approaching at a right angle, accurately enough that I feared it had a way of tracking us.

This was one of those moments where I had to make a clutch decision as leader, but it seemed like a choice of a half-dozen equally awful options. Splitting up, moving closer to Azazel, trying to confront the drone deployer, hiding and risking getting cornered?
Damn.
I wondered if I was maybe better at improvising than I was at spur-of-the-moment strategy. There was a distinction there.
"This way!" I shouted.
Running straight down the road left us dangerously exposed. I led the group down a diagonal route, zig-zagging between alleyways and the main streets. Away from the drone-deployer and slightly towards Azazel.
When Azazel shifted positions and took flight, heading straight for us, I was left to wonder if that had been their plan all along.
"We're being herded!" I called out. "Reverse directions!"
I hauled hard on Bentley's chain, getting him to turn, then goading him to start running the way we'd come. Regent, Imp, Barker and Biter had a harder time. The 'sleds' were too dependent on momentum, and they didn't have built-in traction. Bitch and I pulled ahead on our respective mounts while the others tried to get turned around and build up speed again. We couldn't afford to stop and wait for them.
The drone suit flanked us on our right, drones spilling out of its ports to trail behind it like my bugs trailed behind me. Other drones were moving to cut us off in front. Azazel was behind us and to our left. The herding was still underway – the sole route left to us, if we didn't want to run straight into a mess of drones or one of the suits, would be going left.
Left took us into the area Azazel had employed the rods and the 'hedges'. Fuck that. I could see what Azazel wanted to do, now. The moment we were in there, it would take flight, setting down rods to close the gaps and trapping us inside.
My swarm and my eyes scanned the area. In a matter of seconds this decision would be made for us.
I saw what I was looking for. A third option. If I was eyeballing this wrong, or if Bentley didn't have a hard enough head… well, one of us would get hurt.
"Go!" I urged the mutant bulldog on, steering him for the nearest building. He pulled away, and I steered him back on course, ducking low so I was hugging his neck as I drove him forward into the already ruined display window of a minimall. I could feel the top of the display window scraping against the armor on my back as we passed through.
We stampeded past a store that had already been looted, headed for the glass window that faced the mall interior. If I could find a shortcut through here, exit on the far side of the drone-dragon, we would be able to make a break for it. Shatterbird could drag the two sleds faster than the dogs could run. She wasn't that fast: I could remember how she'd fallen behind the rest of the Nine in the fight where we'd taken her captive. Still, they could fend for themselves for just a little while, while Bitch and I got some breathing room to prepare a counterattack.
The drone-deployer could see what I was doing. Drones were moving down to cut me off. Cut us off, as Bitch had followed. Bentley and I crashed through the store entryway and into the mall proper. It wasn't a big place, and the interior was riddled with tents where some people had holed up. Store owners wanting to protect their goods? The area was empty now. Had Azazel evacuated it?
I could sense two drones orienting themselves to bar our way, and steered Bentley between them. Twenty or twenty-five feet of distance would be enough, if there wasn't anything to conduct the ambient electric charge.
There was. Bentley and I were rocked as both drones fired off at once. The dog took it harder than I did, and we sprawled.
Bitch slowed as she approached. She started to head my way, maybe to rescue me, maybe to help Bentley, but I could sense a drone moving straight for me.
"Go!" I shouted.
She turned and ran, the third drone turning to pursue her. It was too slow. She, at least, would get away.
I couldn't say why the electricity had reached me. I'd thought I'd figured out their basic range when I'd first fought them, but maybe the simultaneous effect had extended the charge between them? Or there was something nearby that had helped carry the charge, something in the tents or the mall's design?
Through the plexiglass that framed the mall entrance, I caught a glimpse of Azazel. The scales that covered it were small and dark, glossy, and the spaces between them glowed like hot coals, red and orange. Its head paused as it glanced through the window, and a red eye fixed on me. It stamped one claw down on the ground, in a movement my swarm had felt too many times.
No.
The rod extended beneath me before I could climb to my feet. In one second, smaller branches had extended under, over and around me. One more second passed, and they bloomed into the blurry effect. Bright red, orange and purple, as if to signify the danger it posed in the most basic, primal sense, like the yellow of hornets or the bright red of poisonous berries.
I froze, afraid to even breathe. I was still in one piece.

Your plan FAILED this time, Skitter. You're trapped now, you can't escape from Azazel, it have you and even if now you're still in one piece, in the next second you might be in more pieces than just one. I'm a bit terrified about what Azazel is planning to do with Skitter. If it will capture her, then Dragon is still the same good ol' Dragon. If it will try to murder her, then we can't talk about the same Dragon anymore.

Tentatively, I commanded some of the bugs out from beneath my costume. The insulation had protected some, luck and sheer durability had saved a scant few others. They died the second they moved more than an inch away from my body, vaporized.

My heart was pounding from the recent exertion, adrenaline still flowing through my veins. As I realized the situation I was in, my body was shifting into fight or flight mode, but humans weren't engineered to go into the same 'deer in the headlights' state like conventional prey animals. And that was what I needed to do. I needed to freeze, not to fight, struggle or run.
My lungs screamed for oxygen, and I let out a small breath. It came out as a half-whimper. I watched as one lock of hair shifted from where it was draped over my shoulderpad, slipped down to touch the blurry growth that surrounded me. It turned to dust, and I held my breath yet again, afraid I'd inhale the vaporized hair and cough.
Azazel was taking the long way around the building, heading into the same storefront I'd ridden Bentley through. It wasn't huge, but it was big, and its progress was agonizingly slow.
I'd been on my hands and knees for ten seconds, maybe twenty, but already my body was feeling the strain, screaming at me to change position. A crease on the inside of one of my kneepads was digging against the bone of my kneecap. The branches that extended around me might hold me, but they might not, either.
And there was nobody even close by. If this was the movies, it would have been an opportune time for Tattletale to make her move, but we'd already been that fortunate once, with Imp forcing Piggot to order a standby. I couldn't hope for a second lucky save.
Azazel was moving through the store now. It was a minute away, as it carefully planted its feet to avoid crushing store merchandise. I wanted to scream at it to move faster, that I was afraid my hand would lose traction on the dusty tile and slip into the disintegration effect. I could lose a limb like that, or belly-flop onto the blur beneath me, bisecting myself.
Why hadn't it cut me when it grew? Because whatever guided the growth kept it from tearing up the surrounding material. It was why the Halberd and dagger hadn't been destroyed by the growth of the disintegration cloud around them, why the growing 'hedges' of the stuff hadn't cut out sections of building.
I wasn't in immediate danger, besides the obvious, so I decided to try something.
"I'm going to fall!" I screamed.
I could sense Azazel lunging forward, crushing a store display as it hurried to the opening, its mouth opening. It directed a blast of superheated air at the ground, so it cut through the lowest portion of the disintegration hedge, clearing the area beneath and around me. I winced at the heat of it, but took it for what it was.
"You may lie down but do not try to move from your current location, Skitter," the machine spoke. It was the same voice as the armbands and drones, but deeper. "Do not stand or make dramatic movements or you may be harmed."

"breathes with relief" Dragon is still Dragon.

Nothing changed at her. Azazel is using lethal weapons, but its not programmed to kill Skitter or any other Undersider. It even protects her life, showing clearly that it only wants to capture her and nothing else. Well, you're half lucky, Skitter, you'll live, but you're still trapped, completely at a Suit's mercy. Unless Tattletale will save your ass (don't doubt her, Skitter, with her skills and Coil's connections/money, she might disable Azazel in no time). Coil have the interest to help Undersiders, after all.

The message delivered, Azazel began spraying Bentley down with containment foam.

I checked with my remaining bugs. A bubble with a four-foot radius had been cleared around me, but the larger branches still existed and a rough dome loomed over me. The area where the hot air had been vented in made for an area I might have been able to fit an arm or leg through if I felt brave, but I wouldn't be able to crawl through, not with the branches being where they were.
"You assholes aren't holding back," I muttered. When the suit didn't respond, I glanced up. It was standing stationary above me, apparently content to have me and me alone.
My allies were still making a run for it. The drone ship pursued Shatterbird, Regent, Imp, Barker and Biter, and some stray drones were chasing Bitch but falling behind. I positioned the relay bugs to keep in touch, but didn't know what to communicate. That I was captured, but they shouldn't come back for me without a plan or reinforcements? Bitch would let them know.
No, I was stuck here, in custody.
"So, she design you to talk?" I asked.
Silence.
"This statement is false," I told it.
"I'll go with true. There, that was easy," Azazel replied.
Damn. Wouldn't be able to shut it down with paradox. Dragon apparently had a sense of humor. The reply sounded canned, a recitation. Or she had a liking for popular culture I wasn't aware of.
Think, Taylor, think! What were my options? I had bugs, but they wouldn't be able to do anything. I drew them closer, wary of the two drones that were picking themselves off the ground. Bentley was down. My weapons wouldn't cut me free, and I was leery of trying to use my weapons on the larger branches, in case I brought something down on my head.
Armsmaster had called it nanotechnology. It cut through anything, everything. If some dropped free and fell to the ground, would it keep falling, cutting out a bottomless pit?
No, I needed to find and exploit weaknesses. If my costumed career had taught me two things, it was that things could always get worse, and there was always a solution. It was, in a way, why I wasn't freaking out over the end of the world. I'd already accepted that things could get bad, and I held out hope that we could find a way out.
I could find a way out here.
The suit had used a heat gun. Was the nanotech vulnerable to heat? To fire? It would be ironic in a way. The growth around me resembled fire with its hues and blurry, transparent nature. Fire frozen in time. The entire scene made for a strange picture.
Azazel and its 'fire' weren't moving in the slightest, and the only things that were moving were the two drones that were rotating lazily around Azazel and the clouds of dust that had been stirred by the blast of hot air.

I like this RARE Skitter's positive attitude about her not very happy situation. There is always a solution for everything. Even for a supposed end of the world. I strongly believe in this statement too, and I think that if someone fights hard against all odds, without ever giving up despite all the troubles, that person will certainly win, soon or later. Fight, Skitter, fight better than trying to defeat it with liar's paradoxes and Portal 2 references (serious, guys, this conversation reminds me of the one between GLaDOS and Wheatley from Portal 2

). I have an idea: if nanotechnology is vulnerable to heat then Skitter can signal to Sundancer through her bugs to use her sun against Azazel. There must be plenty of bugs in the area, won't be too hard to take control over them without Azazel or the dragon Suit noticing it. But there's still a small problem. Sundancer is not there. Maybe she can use her bugs to find Sundancer and call her in her help? Sundancer will be interested to destroy the most powerful Suit, since nobody wants to be captured and they must help each other.

With my swarm, I felt around my utility compartment. Yes, I had a box of matches. I'd packed tissues in there to keep them from rattling around, like I did with my changepurse, so I'd have to use my hands to withdraw them, probably. The suit wouldn't let me once it saw what I was doing. I wasn't sure what the response would be, but it could range from blasting me with containment foam the second the fire ate at the nanotech to hitting me with that superheated air to blow me into the side of the dome, vaporizing me.

Had to deal with Azazel first. I looked up at the reptilian face with glowing red eyes. I could see the snakelike neck, the human-ish shoulders and arms. It looked more like a demon than a dragon, from this perspective.
The only weapons I had were my bugs. There weren't enough in my range, even with the relay bugs, to do anything to the suit.
The model we'd just fought in Bitch's territory had been able to bend steel, would have been able to tear my spider's silk. I couldn't hope to tie Azazel up. It was bigger and I was willing to bet it had more raw strength. Maybe it was better to say that I was confident enough it had more raw strength that I wasn't willing to take the risk.
No, my bugs wouldn't serve. I sent some cockroaches in to see if they could nibble through the insulation of some wires, but it felt futile. Even in what stood to be the more vital areas, like the neck, I doubted my ability to do any real damage.
What other tools did I have?
My voice.
Dragon was smart. Smart enough to write an A.I. that wouldn't crumble to a simple issue with paradox. But the A.I. wasn't necessarily brilliant. It had leaped to my defense when I'd said I was in danger. Either it wasn't smart enough to discern truth from a lie, or it wasn't allowed to when a life was potentially in danger.
I'd wondered if the machines were obligated to preserve our lives. Now I had a better sense of it. Now how to use it?
Regent and Imp were still fleeing the area on one of Shatterbird's sleds. They had outpaced the drone ship, which was moving too slowly to pursue even Shatterbird. It was better suited, it seemed, for seizing and protecting an area than for pursuit. Good.
I drew out a message on Regent's back. 'Hide'. Imp was directly behind him, and bugs on a white shirt would be clear as day to her. I hoped. They were almost out of my range, relay bugs or no.
"You're Azazel, correct?"
"Correct."
"What's the other ship called?"
"The Glaurung Zero is an old model, designed to deploy drones of varying loadouts."
"Thank you for the information."
"You're welcome."
"Don't suppose you'll tell me how to defeat you?"
"No."
"Or your self destruct code?"
"No."
"What if I told you that you were putting a human life in grave danger?"

Thanks God for Dragon's limitations. Azazel is forced to listen Skitter and protect the supposed human life in danger (I suppose is Imp because of her Stranger powers. Skitter told her to hide because she probably wants to trick Azazel into pretending that Imp is there, with her, and in danger to die because of the nano-weapon that the Suit is using. But I wonder if Azazel can be tricked since it can "see" Imp, despite her power. If it will not see Imp, then it will realize that Skitter's statement was fake and not fal for it).

"I have no reasonable cause to believe that."

Damn.
But if it wasn't designed to tell truth from a falsehood, maybe…
"Imp had a second trigger event. She should be invisible to your sensors."
"I have no reasonable cause to believe that."
"Doesn't matter. Imp may be in this room. If you move a foot, you could be stepping on her."
"Imp could not be in this room. As of two minutes ago she was recorded at a distance of .4 miles away from this location. She could not return here in that span of time unobserved."
The suits were communicating. That was good to know, but it wasn't exactly good. It made this harder.
"She could if Trickster leapfrogged her here," I said. If Trickster was currently engaged in a fight with one of the other models, this could blow up in my face.
But the suit didn't refute me. It didn't speak at all.
"I used my power to signal Imp and Trickster and ask them to help. They're nearby, and it's very possible Imp is here. She could be crawling on top of you, for all you know. If you open your mouth, move your head or move a wing, you might be causing her to fall. With your head being where it is, it's not impossible she could fall and roll into this nanotech hedge you've made, right?"
I waited for a response, for the canned reply saying Azazel had no reasonable cause ot believe it. Nothing.
Had it worked?
"Maybe I should be more specific," I said. "I told them to help in general. They might not be helping me, so it's very possible that any other suit might be in immediate proximity to Imp. Be careful you don't accidentally crush her."
No reply. Hopefully that would help the others somehow. It wouldn't stop any of the ones in the air like that Glaurung drone suit, but it could stall others.
"Now," I said, picking my words carefully, my pulse pounding, "I'm going to light a match and try to burn this thing away."
Hesitated.
If the hedge burned quickly enough to matter, what would happen? Azazel could easily spray me down in containment foam.
I began organizing my bugs, placing them on the ceiling, drawing out lines of silk cord.
The PRT could be entering my range any second, ready to take me into custody. I needed to be fast, but I couldn't rush this. I was replicating the natural design of a spiderweb, three times over, but I was making each strand fifty or sixty times as thick, braiding other threads into cords and braiding cords into thicker strands.
It took a minute before I was satisfied. I was aware of the drone that hovered some distance over my head. I adopted a general runner's pose, then lit the match. With my bugs, I was able to sense the safe distance I could raise my hand, match held high.
It burned faster than I would have thought. With a whoosh like I might expect from lighting a barbecue, it was gone.
I drew the matchbook from behind my back, grabbed a match from the box.
A series of things happened in that instant. I pulled free of the branches that hadn't burned away, sprinting for the exit, Azazel opened its mouth and began spewing containment foam, and the drone began speaking, "Attention Citizen…"
I maneuvered the spiderweb-nets into place in the stream. Two were far enough away to catch only a little, but the burden was heavy, growing more awkward for my bugs as the expanding foam captured some and rendered them unable to fly.
I still managed to drag the foam-nets into place, covering one drone's eye-lens and the other's gravity panel. They spiraled out of control, one striking a column, the other plummeting for the ground.
The other net was fixed just in front of Azazel's mouth, strands already wound around the scales of its face. It tore free on one side, but the foam expanded, forming a beard, then covering its mouth.
The makeshift barrier had kept the worst of the foam from reaching me. I scrambled out of the way of the rest, narrowly avoiding getting the damned stuff on my costume.
Azazel's chest opened, and a grappling hook speared out. Still trying to recover from dodging the foam, I couldn't dodge it. It seized me, and I hurried to climb over the railing that surrounded the now-empty fountain to keep Azazel from drawing me up into its chest. Or into the foam that wreathed its head.
I climbed under the railing, to see if I could wind it up any further, then jerked to a stop. The hook was frozen in midair, still clutching the armor at my chest and shoulder.
Right. So this was how they'd planned to counteract Siberian.
I couldn't free myself, and I couldn't fight back, so I waited.
Armsmaster had said this technology drained his batteries, but Azazel could have a major power source in its chest.
It took only a minute before the hook went limp. I managed to pry myself free.
Other than opening its mouth to spray the foam and turning its head, Azazel hadn't budged from its position.
With my swarm, I signaled Regent and Imp: 'Good job. Come back fast.'
Without Bentley, I couldn't cover enough ground. Couldn't run. I found a hiding spot by the mall entrance instead. From the spot, I used my swarm to covertly keep an eye on Azazel, praying that whatever Dragon was doing was consuming her attention. Praying that she wasn't about to override the simple head game I'd pulled on her hyperadvanced mecha-suit.

That was an smart game you played against an AI, Skitter. You pretended that Imp had a second trigger, making her invisible even for machines, then Azazel hesitated to stop you from evading it, because it was "afraid" for accidentally killing Imp. I was sure that you'll use Imp, but I didn't expected for you to play Azazel that GOOD.
I don't think that freezing Siberian will stop her. Manton can simply make her disappear and appear in other place, untouched by any hook. The only way to stop Siberian is to kill or depower Manton.

I'm convinced that Skitter's little game wasn't the one who actually stopped Azazel from holding her frozen in its hook. Tattletale and Dragonslayers finally entered into action, right?

A very satisfying crunching noise rang through the minimall. I stood there, watching in approval with my arms folded as Grue, Sundancer, Ballistic and Genesis approached. I'd signaled Trickster to tell him to stay back. No use giving the suit a way to rationalize its way out of my lie.

"Is that the Azazel?" Grue asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
"It's not moving."
"Because I told it that it might crush Imp if it did."
"Ah," Grue answered. He didn't ask for clarification.
"How'd it go?" Regent asked. Azazel had started venting the mist to clear away the containment foam, freeing its head and front claws where it had been covered in its own foam, but I'd already formed a mesh of spiderwebs to keep it from opening fire with any of its weapons. The mist had also exposed enough of Bentley for us to save him. Working together, we'd already cut the real Bentley free of the desiccated flesh of his larger self that contained him. The bulldog and Bastard were happily sitting between Bitch and I. Shatterbird was hammering at Azazel, smashing it repeatedly with a massive wrecking ball of condensed glass.
Sundancer spoke up, "We took down the hybrid model. Giant gun, was sitting in the stratosphere, shooting down Genesis every time she sent a body out into the open."
"Our group took down two," Bitch said.
"Where are the others? Shouldn't more reinforcements be arriving?" Grue asked.
I shrugged, "If they come, I'll know, and we can react. We've gotten this far."
A minute passed, punctuated by the thud of the glass sphere against Azazel's outer body. Only a little damage was done with each hit, but it was adding up. That, and it felt good, in a way.
Sundancer created an orb of flame and drove it into Azazel. I watched as the metal melted and the wiring burned in clouds of acrid black smoke. In the span of a minute, the suit was slag. I signaled Imp and Trickster to tell them it was okay to approach.
We watched the suit burn. Trickster and Imp joined us from the outskirts of the mall.
"I feel bad about this," I said.
"Why the fuck would you feel bad?" Bitch asked.
"They must have put millions into manufacturing this. That was supposed to stop the Nine, and It was powerful enough that it might have, if it'd had Dragon's brain backing it up."
"They can build more," Grue said.
"Scary thought," Sundancer commented.
"We got lucky," I said. "What with Imp being able to force Piggot to shut them down, and the way I could exploit it's A.I. to lock down its movements. Maybe you can make a program versatile and leave yourself open to the program using loopholes to work around any safeties you put in place. Or you can make it heavily restricted and leave it open to vulnerabilities like what I exploited there. I guess we're a ways off from an A.I. being smart enough to work around those limitations."
"It's a matter of time," Regent said.
"You're such a pessimist," Imp retorted.
"And I'm so right."
The suit continued to burn. Containment foam billowed out of a container within Azazel's body, putting out the worst of the flames and leaving us with an assurance that Azazel wouldn't be lurching back to life the second we turned our backs.
"Let's go," Grue said. "Four more suits to take down, and we don't have long before it gets dark."
I nodded.
We were half a block away from the minimall when a phone rang, startling the living daylights out of us. It was my satellite phone.
Dragon?
Tattletale: "Phones are back on."
"Why? Is she baiting us? Trying to get us to reveal our positions?"
"She's gone," Tattletale replied. "Suits leaving the city, satellite phones are working. Few factors at play, there. I got word back from the Dragonslayers. Paid them a few million bucks to tell me how they keep getting the upper hand on Dragon, tell me how she's relaying commands to her suits. With that, I had some squads plant C-4 and knock down cell towers. That slowed her down, cut her bandwidth, so to speak, and limited her ability to reprogram them on the fly. I'm guessing you guys took out one or more suits?"

TATTLETALE IS THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE STORY. No, but seriously, I ADORE her character, she's exactly the kind of girl I'd like to be (except for her bullying and villainous side). I'd be devastated if she'll ever die because I'm investing a lot of emotions in her character. If I have to choose between Skitter's life and Tattletale's life, I'd be like: Bye, bye, Skitter, it was nice to know you while it lasted. I'm very honest with my admiration or hate for characters, maybe I'm exaggerating sometimes but this is how I feel. My emotions are usually very powerful. Alright, back to the story. Just as I predicted: Tattletale paid Dragonslayers to help her with defeating Dragon's Suits. You know what, depends of what role (and what kind of person he's) will play in this story, I might end up liking or disliking this leader of Dragonslayers...Saint is his name, right? He's very intelligent (a Tinker?) and have an unexplained grudge against Dragon, but he helped Undersiders to avoid being captured, which is a plus in my books. If he'll prove to be a jerk obsessed to eliminate Dragon or destroy her limitations so he can control her then I will have all the reasons to say: Go fuck yourself and die as a result, Saint, you're fucking evil.

But if he'll end up being by Undersiders' side and maybe helping them to stop Coil then I might honestly like him.

Depends of what the future Chapters will bring into play.

"Three," Bitch said.

"Two or three," I clarified.
"That cost the Protectorate a good chunk of cash, and it's detracting from Dragon's primary mission, which is the Nine. My guess is she's zeroing in on them. Better to have a few suits closer to where she thinks they are than to leave them here in the city for you guys to keep breaking. So she thinks, anyways, and the bigwigs that are footing the bill seem to agree."
"I can live with that," I said.
"I think we all can. It doesn't mean there won't be more coming down the road. But whatever else she does, she won't be able to sell the local government on the idea that victory is a hundred percent assured, and she'll have to justify the costs to the PRT. That means we're getting a reprieve. When she does come back, it'll only be because she's certain she can win."
I glanced around at the others. "That's good to know, kind of."
"What's important is it won't be in the next little while. If they intend to send someone like Eidolon or Alexandria here, even, it won't be anytime soon. So I can give you the official announcement. We won. Job complete. The Pure have hauled ass out of town, Faultline's apparently decided it's safer to be out of the city, and you've humiliated the heroes enough that they can't honestly contest your claim. There's nobody left."
"The city is ours?" Grue asked.
"The city is ours. And here's the thing. Order from the one in charge," Lisa paused, and her meaning was clear. An order from Coil. "You're done. Good job. Your final order for the time being is to take a few days off. No costumed tomfoolery. Go back to your territories, make sure things are okay, but no getting into fights. If I see you out in costume, you're fired. Hell, I'll shoot you."
It sounded like a joke, the way Tattletale put it, but the deeper meaning was clear. Coil was telling us to stand down. No matter what.
"Just like that?" Grue asked.
"Yeah," Tattletale said.
"I was going to go out," I said, "Uncostumed, don't worry, but um-"
Didn't want to say where I was going on a line the heroes might be listening in on.
"I get it," Tattletale said. "I know where. One sec."
A pause. No doubt while she checked with Coil.
"Okay. Cool," she said.
"I can go? It won't cause issues?"
"No issues. So long as you-"
"I know," I cut her off. So long as I left the costume at home.
"We'll talk later," she said. "Gonna go see if I can get more details on what happened. Betting someone blew their top when they realized you guys demolished two of those suits."
"Three," Bitch said.
"Sure, three," Tattletale clarified. "Ta ta."
She hung up.
Our group paused, each of us looking to the others, as if we couldn't believe it, or we were measuring each other's reactions.
We'd won. We'd cost the PRT too much in resources, pride and money, and they'd apparently decided it wasn't worth their time to uproot us. I hated the bureaucracy, the fucked up mindset of the institutions, but it was clearly working in our favor here, at least.
Coil had his city. There was nothing more I could do. The only thing stopping Coil from following through on his end of the deal and releasing Dinah was, well, Coil.
I exhaled slowly, letting out a deep breath that I felt like I'd been holding in for a month.

Things I'm enjoying after seeing Undersiders' (Coil) victory:
-Undersiders weren't captured;
-Dragon is going after the REAL DANGEROUS supervillains, leaving Undersiders and Travelers alone;
-Coil is going to be fucking killed, once Skitter and Trickster will realize that he never planned to keep his word with Dinah and Noelle;

Things I'm NOT enjoying:
-Dragon is probably crushed because she was violated again by Dragonslayers and she lost 3 of her Suits, including the best one. I feel sorry for her;
-Emily Piggot must be emotionally crushed because the villains who are holding her prisoner won, no matter how much she tried to stop them. I feel sorry for her;
-Dinah will NOT BE FREE and Noelle will NOT BE FIXED because Coil is not a man of word.
-Cauldron might use Alexandria or Eidolon to protect Coil and I really, really DON'T SEE what Skitter can do against either of them.
-Skitter is going to see her dad, right? And lie/leave him again, right? Poor, poor Danny.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

rafuki22 · Aug 28, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, buddies. After the short win against Crawler Suit/the failure to defeat it permanently, its time for another Mythological Suit, Azazel, the Fallen Angel, to make its appearance and challenge Undersiders to a fight. The most powerful Suit, the love child of Dragon and Defiant, against the group of teenage villains that Dragon and Defiant believe that they're as dangerous and scary as S9. I won't be surprised if- right in the middle of the fight- Azazel to shut down completely, letting Undersiders go without any further attacks. Because I'd know that someone made her job, using her wits (and a little help from outside her group) to eliminate the threat of the Suits [muffled Tattletale's laugh being heard in the distance] [muffled Dragon's cry being also heard in the distance]. Ok, I'll be honest. Since Dragon is the first AI that I ever liked in a work of fiction (she's not among my favorite characters but I like her and I admire her efforts to make the world a better place for parahumans and non-powered people alike), I'll feel kind of sorry for her if she'll lose her Suits to Tattletale and/or Dragonslayers. I'll feel sorry for Defiant too, they worked hard to create these robots whose main role is to fight against villains and protect innocents. But, I'm by Undersiders' side this time -I have to be- so...sorry, you two, but you have my word that I'll cheer for you when you'll fight S9. I'll be 100% by your side to kick their ass through the entire multiverse. Alright, let's start this goddamn fight Monarch 16.5

Its their LOVE CHILD, Skitter, please, be more understanding. If you don't get how two Tinkers of different sexes can have a child, I'm going to explain you right now. So, when the mommy Tinker have a specialty, she builds stuff related to her specialty, then daddy Tinker builds other stuff related to his specialty, they both combine their stuff into a bigger stuff and...VOILA...their child is born. Now you understand how the things are working with Tinkers and reproduction? Leaving this childish joke aside, I seriously think that Dragon and Defiant can have a child together, if they will ever wish for. Since Dragon can already "build" biological fetuses, it won't be hard for her to "build" an artificial uterus (this stuff already EXIST in our world- the first artificial uterus was successfully used to grew baby sheep), use artificial insemination with Defiant's sperm and....they will have a little healthy baby boy or girl. But right now, they don't have time for this, they have more stressful things to deal with than changing diapers and restless nights (they can't sleep anyway so their nights won't be exactly restless). Gosh, I derailed a bit from the story with all the baby stuff. Sorry. Back to Skitter dealing with Azazel.

Skitter, Dragon's specialty is to copy all other Tinkers' specialties. She can copy Bonesaw too, if she wants, and the main proof to support my affirmation is her ability to create organic/biologic stuff (fetuses-pilots). There are no limits in what she can do. If Tinkers are a powerhouse, she's their goddess. I want to see Skitter's reaction when she'll find out about the true nature of Dragon, that she herself was created by a Tinker. Skitter will be shocked for sure then will start blame herself that she didn't see this fact before its revelation. Yes, Skitter, Tinkers are dangerous as fuck. From all Classifications, they're the most dangerous ones, followed close by Thinkers (just look at what Tattletale and Coil CAN DO) and Masters (should I specify how instantly dangerous someone who can control mind/emotions/body can be?!?). I my opinion, these 3 Classifications are something that nobody in their right mind should mess with.

I was sure that Azazel will use nano-technology, which was a smart and LETHAL weapon against Leviathan and since the Suit was built by Dragon and Defiant against S9 and Undersiders, of course its using LETHAL weapons. I'm surprised that Dragon is ready to kill Skitter. I was under impression that she wants to FIND her and TALK to her, not kill her. The only one who actively tried to kill Skitter is Defiant, back when he was Armsmaster. What if he convinced Dragon that Skitter is someone so dangerous that she can't be captured alive and only death will stop her? What if Dragon listened Defiant? Or...what if he re-programmed her, removing her limits, so she now is free to do what she considers is necessary to stop villains, including killim them? I'm not sure what to say about this, if is true, but I know a certain thing: Skitter (and everyone else) are in a DEEP SHIT. I think I know why Azazel creates those nano-hedgers. To catch Undersiders in a trap so they have nowhere to run and hide from the drone-dragon. Then the drone-dragon can....ok, I should try to think in a more positive manner. Maybe nothing bad will happen to Undersiders and I'm just scared because...Let's see what will happen further, shall we?

Your plan FAILED this time, Skitter. You're trapped now, you can't escape from Azazel, it have you and even if now you're still in one piece, in the next second you might be in more pieces than just one. I'm a bit terrified about what Azazel is planning to do with Skitter. If it will capture her, then Dragon is still the same good ol' Dragon. If it will try to murder her, then we can't talk about the same Dragon anymore.

"breathes with relief" Dragon is still Dragon. Nothing changed at her. Azazel is using lethal weapons, but its not programmed to kill Skitter or any other Undersider. It even protects her life, showing clearly that it only wants to capture her and nothing else. Well, you're half lucky, Skitter, you'll live, but you're still trapped, completely at a Suit's mercy. Unless Tattletale will save your ass (don't doubt her, Skitter, with her skills and Coil's connections/money, she might disable Azazel in no time). Coil have the interest to help Undersiders, after all.

I like this RARE Skitter's positive attitude about her not very happy situation. There is always a solution for everything. Even for a supposed end of the world. I strongly believe in this statement too, and I think that if someone fights hard against all odds, without ever giving up despite all the troubles, that person will certainly win, soon or later. Fight, Skitter, fight better than trying to defeat it with liar's paradoxes and Portal 2 references (serious, guys, this conversation reminds me of the one between GLaDOS and Wheatley from Portal 2 ). I have an idea: if nanotechnology is vulnerable to heat then Skitter can signal to Sundancer through her bugs to use her sun against Azazel. There must be plenty of bugs in the area, won't be too hard to take control over them without Azazel or the dragon Suit noticing it. But there's still a small problem. Sundancer is not there. Maybe she can use her bugs to find Sundancer and call her in her help? Sundancer will be interested to destroy the most powerful Suit, since nobody wants to be captured and they must help each other.

Thanks God for Dragon's limitations. Azazel is forced to listen Skitter and protect the supposed human life in danger (I suppose is Imp because of her Stranger powers. Skitter told her to hide because she probably wants to trick Azazel into pretending that Imp is there, with her, and in danger to die because of the nano-weapon that the Suit is using. But I wonder if Azazel can be tricked since it can "see" Imp, despite her power. If it will not see Imp, then it will realize that Skitter's statement was fake and not fal for it).

That was an smart game you played against an AI, Skitter. You pretended that Imp had a second trigger, making her invisible even for machines, then Azazel hesitated to stop you from evading it, because it was "afraid" for accidentally killing Imp. I was sure that you'll use Imp, but I didn't expected for you to play Azazel that GOOD.
I don't think that freezing Siberian will stop her. Manton can simply make her disappear and appear in other place, untouched by any hook. The only way to stop Siberian is to kill or depower Manton.
I'm convinced that Skitter's little game wasn't the one who actually stopped Azazel from holding her frozen in its hook. Tattletale and Dragonslayers finally entered into action, right?

TATTLETALE IS THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE STORY. No, but seriously, I ADORE her character, she's exactly the kind of girl I'd like to be (except for her bullying and villainous side). I'd be devastated if she'll ever die because I'm investing a lot of emotions in her character. If I have to choose between Skitter's life and Tattletale's life, I'd be like: Bye, bye, Skitter, it was nice to know you while it lasted. I'm very honest with my admiration or hate for characters, maybe I'm exaggerating sometimes but this is how I feel. My emotions are usually very powerful. Alright, back to the story. Just as I predicted: Tattletale paid Dragonslayers to help her with defeating Dragon's Suits. You know what, depends of what role (and what kind of person he's) will play in this story, I might end up liking or disliking this leader of Dragonslayers...Saint is his name, right? He's very intelligent (a Tinker?) and have an unexplained grudge against Dragon, but he helped Undersiders to avoid being captured, which is a plus in my books. If he'll prove to be a jerk obsessed to eliminate Dragon or destroy her limitations so he can control her then I will have all the reasons to say: Go fuck yourself and die as a result, Saint, you're fucking evil. But if he'll end up being by Undersiders' side and maybe helping them to stop Coil then I might honestly like him. Depends of what the future Chapters will bring into play.

Things I'm enjoying after seeing Undersiders' (Coil) victory:
-Undersiders weren't captured;
-Dragon is going after the REAL DANGEROUS supervillains, leaving Undersiders and Travelers alone;
-Coil is going to be fucking killed, once Skitter and Trickster will realize that he never planned to keep his word with Dinah and Noelle;

Things I'm NOT enjoying:
-Dragon is probably crushed because she was violated again by Dragonslayers and she lost 3 of her Suits, including the best one. I feel sorry for her;
-Emily Piggot must be emotionally crushed because the villains who are holding her prisoner won, no matter how much she tried to stop them. I feel sorry for her;
-Dinah will NOT BE FREE and Noelle will NOT BE FIXED because Coil is not a man of word.
-Cauldron might use Alexandria or Eidolon to protect Coil and I really, really DON'T SEE what Skitter can do against either of them.
-Skitter is going to see her dad, right? And lie/leave him again, right? Poor, poor Danny.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

My God, without offending, but some of your theories make me want to laugh.
Also, five negative points for three positive points? It does not seem stable to me.

blackarrow · Aug 30, 2018

Hey, my friends, what's up? Everything is good with you? Good, because I'm feeling excellent in this moment, if you ask me, and more than ready to BLOW UP your minds with a few more of my excessively RIDICULOUS theories (but sometimes pretty true, right?). I talked with my father about Worm (he's at Arc 12 with reading) and I told him that Lisa is a role model for girls (if you take away her power and villainous side) and he completely agreed. He loves Lisa and is an open-minded man who strongly believes in equality between men and women and like powerful and independent girls/women (whatever fictional or real) who can serve as role models.

He also said that Taylor should be considered a role model too but I don't agree with this statement. I wouldn't like to see super-pessimistic girls who severely underestimate themselves and always think that is their fault for mostly anything that happen in the world. Taylor's large parts of her personality can't be considered suitable to be copied by girls; plus Taylor also have no qualms to do some pretty nasty things in order to reach her purposes. Taylor can be a lot of things BUT NOT a good role model for girls/women. But my father is convinced that he's right and I hate to argue with him because he never give up at his opinions not even when I prove him that he's wrong. Hell, I'm just like him here so I have no right to judge him.

Back to the Dark Lords and Dark Ladies of Brockton Bay celebrating their victory over heroes. Guys, before everything, please, don't forget to let Emily go to her house. Even if she's defeated and her spirit was destroyed, she still needs to go home for her treatment. She was punished enough for everything she did (she wanted to do), ok? Enough is enough

Monarch 16.6

"We should throw a party," Imp said. "Celebrate. Rub it in a little."

"Rub it in?" Grue asked.
"Yeah. Party in the streets, maybe some fireworks. Show the heroes that we know we won and we're doing fine."
There were a few chuckles from the others. Regent and the Travelers, primarily.
"In what way is that even close to being a sensible idea?" Grue asked.
"I didn't say it was sensible. But it's fun, and that's why we got into this, right?"
"No. No it isn't. It was maybe a side-bonus when I joined the group, if anything, but things have changed since then. I warned you this would be hard work, that it wouldn't be fun and games. And throwing a party to celebrate a win is a monumentally bad idea when we don't even want the heroes to know we consider this victory anything out of the ordinary."
"It is out of the ordinary. We're not giving anything away if we're celebrating scaring off Dragon."
"I kind of have to agree," Regent chimed in. Grue turned his way, and I could imagine the death glare that was behind his mask. Probably scarier than the mask itself.
"Maybe you're right," Grue said, "Maybe, I won't say you're absolutely right there-"
"Of course not," Imp said, sighing.
"-But we definitely don't need to rub it in the heroes' noses. Not if it means they have both an excuse and motivation to try this again, sooner."
"If you're afraid of that, we'll never be able to celebrate a win."
"I'm okay with that," Grue said.
"Do we get to chime in?" Trickster asked. "Because I'm siding with the Imp, here. Morale could become pretty important if we're going to be building up individual gangs and collections of henchmen."
Grue sighed. "Feeling outnumbered here. Skitter?"
"What?" I blinked. "Sorry, not keeping track of the conversation."
"She's out of it. Tattletale broke Skitter when she said we won," Regent said.

PARTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!! You all deserve to party because you fought hard and you won against one of the most powerful heroes in the whole world. I don't care if you'll offend heroes by partying as hard as is parahumanly possible, this victory was one of the greatest victories you all ever scored and deserve the best party that this earth and all its sisters and brothers earths ever seen in their entire existence. A party that will crash the multiverse, ripping the space time fabric and forcing the reality to cannibalize itself.

Yes, I'm sure that Skitter's mind is broken by this unexpected victory. She must ask herself right now if she isn't dreaming and when she'll be convinced that everything that happened wasn't just a dream, watch her starting to lament that she doesn't deserve happiness, that she's a bad person, guity of so many deaths and so on, making everyone around to sigh and forget about their party plans because their good mood is gone. For the sake of everyone else, Skitter, don't do it. Don't do it, girl, they deserve some peaceful moments after all these hard fights/tortures/moments close to death they're involved into for months. Have mercy of their damned souls.

"I'm… I'm alright. Lost in thought"

Grue settled a hand on my shoulder. I couldn't read his expression with his mask in the way.
I sighed and confessed, "I'm… I guess I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Isn't that what happens? The second things start to go right, the next disaster strikes? Empire Eighty-Eight, Leviathan, The Nine, Dragon…"
"That's a pretty defeatist way of thinking," Trickster commented. "Didn't Tattletale basically say that there's nobody left to cause us any problems?"
"There's always something," I said. "I'd rather anticipate it and be ready."
"Look at it this way," Genesis spoke. She was in a human-ish form, not unlike her real self, though she was wheelchair-free. "If it's more dangerous than Leviathan, the Nine or the Dragon suits, there's no way we can make some plan to deal with them until they make the first move. If they're lessdangerous, we can deal. Relax. We're in good shape."
I shrugged.
"Sooo," Imp drew out the word, "Party?"
"No," Grue and I spoke at the same time. Imp groaned.
"Coil told us to check on our territories. We should do that," I said. "Take your costumes off, take it easy. I'm going to see if the food and drink I'd arranged to go to people in my territory is still okay, and make sure that they get fed and don't have cause to lynch me. Then I'm probably going to sleep for twelve straight hours."
"Wait, didn't you just say no party?" Imp asked.
"It's not a party. It's something I was doing before the Dragon suits came."
"Do the heroes know that?"
"Dragon could confirm it," I said. "She disrupted the preparations."
"Dunno, that sounds pretty flimsy," Imp said, sounding way too pleased with herself, "Maybe you better cancel, just to be safe."
"Imp," Grue growled the word.
Imp laughed, "I'll go patrol our territory. I'll be using my power, so no worries about being seen in costume."
"Coil said we shouldn't go out in costume at all," I said. "I thought that part of the message was pretty clear."
"Fine," Imp said. "Whatever. If I'm not supposed to do anything, I'm going back to our place, gonna to kick back and catch up on some shitty reality shows."
"No TV," Grue said.
"Nuh uh. No way. If you two want to play hardass mom and dad and be controlling assholes, okay. But you can't tell me I can't watch T.V."
"I mean you won't get any channels. There's no cable, no digital connection and no satellite. Only static."
Imp groaned, an agonized sound one might expect from someone who had just been speared through the gut. What did it say about me that my metaphors were tending towards that kind of violent imagery?
"Why don't you come by?" Regent asked her, "Play video games? I've got shows on DVD. No shitty reality shows, but stuff."
I looked Grue's way to gauge his reaction to Imp and Regent hanging out, only for our eyes to meet, so to speak. We were thinking the same thing.
"I don't think-" Grue started to speak.
Imp wheeled on him, jabbing a finger in his direction, "Enough! You don't dictate how I live my life!"
"No fighting, please," Sundancer said, from the sidelines, "We've been through too much already."
Grue stepped forward, raising one hand, but Imp didn't give him a chance to touch her, backing away, swinging one hand through the air, as if to swat his hand away if he tried. "You've said enough! You don't want me to celebrate my first legit win where I was actually fucking useful? Fine! Don't want me to go on patrol? Fine! I'll accept that shit because I'll take orders from the guy who actually pays me. But if you're going to whine because I want to play video games with a teammate, I'm not going to stand here and listen to it! Deal!"
"If you'd just-" Grue started. He stopped and sighed.

You merciless Queen of Invertebrates, how much you love to bother people with your general pessimistic attitude. You're not going to have any other problem- S9 are out of the City, being hunted down by Defiant and Dragon, Merchants are gone, nazis left the City as well, Faultline's Crew is not a danger anymore (but they're never a danger in the first place), the only problem I can see is the apparition of another Endbringer, Cauldron deciding to protect their pawn Coil against anyone who'd try to get rid of him, Nilblog becoming interested to extend his "garden" to other cities, one of them being Brockton Bay or Coil himself giving up at UT services through not some peaceful manners. Yes, these can be some serious problems but until then...why you just can't live the moment, Skitter? Live the moment and let others live it as well.

Imp is great as always. Her brother is like: Young lady, listen to your big brother here. You're still too young to understand that....and she's like: Bye, fucker! and POOF away. Imp- the most comedic character in this story with one of the most useful powers.

"What?" I asked.

"I was going to say something," he said, turning around. "But I can't remember what."
We experienced a moment where the conversation died, where nobody was sure what to say next, and nobody was able to tie things back to the prior conversation to resume an earlier topic.
"We did what we were supposed to do," Trickster said, finally. "Good work. Skitter's right. Let's go retreat, tend to any wounds, and we'll take a breather."
There were nods and murmurs of assent from everyone present, myself included.
More to his team than the rest of us, Trickster said, "I'm located closest to Coil, so I'm stopping by, going to check on Noelle, see if Tattletale needs help setting our captive Director free, and then I'll talk to Coil about his progress with our issues."
"Don't get on his case," Genesis said. "Whatever his plan is, he's under a lot of pressure right now. I'd rather wait another few days and then talk about it with him than push it now and risk upsetting him."
"The difference between us," Trickster said, terse, "is I'm not willing to wait."

Tattletale is going to release Emily. Good, Tattletale, now I feel more relieved knowing that Emily will not die in the custody of people she hates the most. If Cauldron will not jump in his defense, Coil will be fucked once Trickster's fragile patience will expire. Trickster might be naive- or too desperate to believe anything a snake hisses at his ear, but he's not stupid and will not wait forever for Coil to keep his promise. Either Trickster or Skitter will be the one who'll put an end to Coil's harmful existence. I won't be surprised if Noelle will escape from her prison and will get all vengeful upon the man who ruined her hopes with empty promises.

With that said, he tipped his hat at me and walked away. He wasn't three paces out the door before he found something to swap with, leaving a mailbox at the mall's edge. The rest of the Travelers began to file off.

"I'll be off too," Regent said. He offered me a sloppy mock-salute, "Good work, chief."
I winced at that. I hadn't wanted to raise the subject of me taking over as leader for the previous confrontation. I glanced at Grue and found him looking at me.
"Can we talk?" he asked. Thanks, Regent.
"Yeah," I said.
"We did make plans."
"You're dating?" Bitch asked.
"I didn't say that," Grue said.
"But you're dating."
"Yeah," he admitted. Bitch looked at me to double check and I nodded.
"Hm." She somehow conveyed smugness with the monosyllablic response.
"You want to come?" I asked her. "Hang out?"
"Nah."
"You sure?" I asked. "You're welcome to spend some time with us, kick back, watch something, eat some good food?"
"Being around people's too tiring. Warm night like this, nice weather, figure I'll go play with my dogs. Make sure they aren't too hurt, throw a few balls for 'em in the moonlight, eat when I want to eat, sleep when I feel like sleeping, not having to worry about getting in anyone's way."
"You wouldn't be getting in the way," I assured her.
"It's all good. I'm happiest doing this."
"Well, stay in touch. If you feel like some company, come by again?"
She shrugged and turned to leave, Bentley to her right and Bastard to her left. With every step Bentley was taking, he was getting larger. When she was nearly out of sight, Bentley was big enough for her to climb on top of.
Leaving Grue and me standing in the mall.
"I'd almost think you didn't want to spend time alone with me," he commented.
He was looking at me. I felt scrutinized, like every movement and every part of me was suddenly under the spotlight, anything I did potentially being read as meaning something.
"No," I said, very carefully. Not exactly. I just didn't want to hurt him by taking away his role on the team, and I knew it would come up. I tucked my hair behind the spot where the armor of my mask covered my ear. "No. Being alone together is good."
"Your place?" he asked.
"Yeah."

WHAT TIME IT IT? DATING TIME. Finally, some romance in this story, even if is not a heart-melting kind of romance, but is better than nothing at all. Fireflies fly to Hive, ready to have a pleasant time together. While I don't doubt Grue to be a pleasant partner to for a girl to have during her first date, I'm afraid that Skitter can fuck up with this date once she'll open her mouth and ask Grue if he's not afraid that the fact that they're parahumans will stop them from enjoying mundane things like an innocent date or if he believes that one of them will die or become crazy enough to kill the other one in the next second, meaning that their relationship will be doomed without even starting properly. You know, normal stuff that Skitter would ask her boyfriend during their first date.

My people were active in my territory, but they were busier cleaning up the mess than they were actually getting stuff done. It was irritating on a lot of levels. We'd been accomplishing something, and Dragon had interrupted. We're in the world on the other side of the looking glass, I thought, where it's the heroes who get in the way of progress and recovery.

I could understand why Dragon did it. I wasn't saying it was her fault, exactly. Especially if it wasn't actually her directing the suits. But it was still irritating.
The silence between us was a tense one. I wished Bitch had decided to come along. Not because it would have generated conversation, but because it would have put off the subject of discussing team leadership, and the third wheel would have made for a reason for the quiet. Was it bad of me to think about using her like that? Or was it just accepting that she made an uncomfortable silence comfortable by her very nature?
I used my power to scout for any groups of people as we made our way to the beach. We weren't supposed to be out in costume, but we didn't have any great options at this point. I figured Coil would forgive us this much. We entered the storm drain and made our way up to my lair.
Charlotte and Sierra looked surprised to see us as I opened the door. Charlotte had three kids sitting on the couch with her, while Sierra reclined. She rose to a sitting position.
"What happened?" Sierra asked. She glanced nervously at Grue.
I saw Charlotte and the kids had plates on their laps. The pork we'd been cooking earlier in the day. I headed for the fridge and found a hunk of it wrapped in cling film. "The PRT didn't like the fact that we'd claimed control over Brockton Bay, so they sent in seven Dragon suits to root us out."
"What do you want us to do?" She asked.
"Nothing. It's fine. Stick to business as usual. I'm glad you managed to get back to the food in time to make sure it finished cooking alright. Any other problems?"
"We didn't get a lot of work done," Charlotte said.
"We weren't going to anyways," I said, "That's fine. I'm going to grab some food. Grue, you want any?"
"Yeah. Please."
"Seven Dragon suits?" Sierra said. "If they come back-"
"They're dealt with," Grue said. Was the surprise on Sierra and Charlotte's faces because of what Grue had said, or was it the way he'd said it with such confidence in his strange, echoey voice?
I set two servings worth of the pork onto one plate and put it in the microwave. "They may come back, but that'll be a little while coming. What I'm worried about is my territory. Were people upset?"
"Yeah," Sierra said. "A few people got shocked by those floating flying saucer things."
"The drones," I said. My heart sank a little. My promise to protect my people had been broken yet again.
"Yeah. Drones. People were pissed. They were trying to get the drones, catch them in trash cans, but the wings got in the way, so they started using tarps. They even got hold of a few before the drones started fighting back."
Grue gave me a look that I couldn't read. Stupid masks.
"Anyone seriously hurt?"
Sierra shook her head.
"Ok, good. Listen, I'm going to be working from the background these next few days. I won't be appearing anywhere in costume or overtly using my powers. Are you okay with keeping things running smoothly? I'll be available by phone if you run into any
problems."
"I, um, I don't know."
I opened the microwave and withdrew the plate of smoking, herb-rubbed pork. "What's the problem?"
"I'm worried people are going to recognize me, and it'll get around to the people I know."
"I'm not asking you to do anything criminal. I'm just looking for someone I can trust enough to put in a management role. Make sure things are cleaned up and that nobody's slacking off. It's nothing you wouldn't be doing working for a cleanup crew somewhere else in the city."
"Except I'm doing it for you. I'm working for a criminal. Even doing what I'm doing right now, it doesn't sit right. No offense."

Sierra is not happy with her role, even if she seemed to be pretty ok with it and even demonstrated how good she can be as a minion for Skitter. Sierra, you don't have to continue with this job if you feel like its not fitting you. You already helped Skitter a lot, you showed her your gratitude for saving your brother even more than she asked you. You can leave anytime if you want, she's not going to stop you. Skitter is NOT Coil or Bakuda or Kaiser. Despite all her flaws, she's one the best and fairest villain bosses and ALWAYS keep her word towards her employees. She promised you that she's not going to force you to do something you don't want to do (including working for her for the rest of your life) and be sure that she'll keep her damn promise.

"Okay," I said, pausing. I was apparently taking too long to prepare the food, because Grue was edging in to take over the preparation, cutting the meat into two portions and arranging the plates. How was I supposed to manage this? "Listen, I'll take five thousand dollars out of the safe upstairs, sometime late tonight or early tomorrow."

"It's not about the money, or the lack of money, or any of that-" she protested.
"I know. I'm not trying to bribe you. Not exactly. I guess, um…" I trailed off. I was tired, thinking at high intensity for too much of the day. "Um, I'm trying to say I trust you, and I value the work you put in. So take that money, then if you know of someone who could do what I'm asking, someone like Charlotte or someone else you think we could trust, give them as much as you think is appropriate. If there's any left over, maybe you and Charlotte split it. Or split an amount between the people who fought the drones, and be sure to tell them that as much as I appreciate them standing up to Dragon, I don't want them to do anything like that again."
"You don't?"
"The last thing I want is people who live in my territory to get hurt for my sake. And I don't want you to be inconvenienced either. Think about what you'll do with the money tonight. But don't overthink it. It's a gift, a thank you."
"I can't take your money," Sierra said.
"Then don't," I told her, trying to look like I was more focused on the food than anything else. It wouldn't do for her to see how much this was gutting me, and I didn't want her to get guilted into anything. I grabbed a coke from the fridge. I gestured with it to Grue, and he nodded. I grabbed another for him. I had to swallow and clear my throat before I said, "I hope you'll stay. I really do. But if you're not comfortable doing what you're doing, that's okay too. You can take a secondary role, or you can leave. I'll be disappointed, but I won't be angry."
"Okay."
I looked at Charlotte and the kids, the steaming plate in my hand, a coke in the other, my right foot resting on the bottom stair of the staircase. I asked Charlotte, "Are you okay with the status quo?"
"Yeah. But I'm just looking after the little ones, and making sure people get fed. I'm out of sight, I don't come off like a second in command or anything. I- Sierra and I have talked about this, before, her being uncomfortable. I'm okay because this works for right now, but I understand what she's saying?" Her voice quirked with uncertainty as she finished speaking, as if she were asking a question, or asking permission to have that opinion.
"I understand too," I said, sighing. "I'm sorry I haven't been around enough for you to talk to me about this, Sierra."
"You've had bigger things to worry about."
"And I shouldn't have forgotten about this stuff while I was doing it. I'm sorry. You do what you need to do, decide if there's any compromises or options you want to ask for. I think I'll understand, whatever you do."
She nodded.
Grue had walked ahead of me and stopped halfway up the stairs. I followed him, leaving my nanny-cook and reluctant lieutenant behind.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"You going to work that out?" Grue asked. He paused on the second floor. After a moment's thought, I tilted my head up toward the next set of stairs.
"Don't know. Hope I can keep her. Wouldn't have made it this far without her to hold things together when I was away. If there was something I could do for her, maybe I would. I dunno."
We stepped into my bedroom. I was glad I'd left it more or less tidy, but I had to take a second to hastily make my bed and throw some stray clothes in the hamper. I moved some folded clothes from a wooden chair and let Grue take the seat. I grabbed a remote and turned on the TV, only to remember that there wouldn't be anything to watch. I left it on the display screen for the DVD player.
Edgy with nervous energy, I took a moment to remove my mask and find a pair of glasses from the bedside table before seating myself on the edge of my mattress, my soda at my feet.
Grue had pulled off his helmet in the meantime to start eating, and I saw his face for the first time since we'd left his apartment for Coil's. I could see the dark circles under his eyes, which suggested he probably hadn't slept well last night. He wasn't better, but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to be.
Brian swallowed, "I wish I could offer you advice, but Imp and I are at a point where it'd be nice if we had to worry about retaining… what did you call them, way back when?"
"Employees."
"Right. If we had to worry about keeping our employees, it'd be good, because it'd mean we actually had some. I'm not sure how to get underway on that front. We're intimidating."
"I'm intimidating," I said, admittedly defensive.
"You are. But I'd say you're more intimidating as an idea than you are in person."
"Gee, thanks."
"No. That's not bad. You're more intimidating overall than I am, and yet you're more approachable than I am. I'm tall, I've got broad shoulders, I've got the mask, I've got the mass of darkness rolling off me. People run when they see me coming for them."

Told you that Skitter will understand if Sierra and Charlotte will decide to start a non-villainous life away from her influence. I feel happy for them no matter their decision but I'll also feel kind of sad because maybe I'll not get to see them again if they'll stop being a part of Skitter and Hive's life. I love these girls, especially Sierra and I wish them the best in their lives and I prefer to not see them again but know that they're safe than something bad to happen to any of them.

"sighs" Guys, you're talking about your jobs while you're dating? What the hell? I know that neither of you is romantic by heart or had another relationship before but still....YOU'RE DATING, for Wildbow's sake, you're no longer Skitter and Grue, you're Taylor and Brian, a couple of loverbirds at their first date.

I'm still expecting for Brian to be the one to make the MOVE, take Taylor in his strong, muscled arms, and cover her in kisses while telling how that she's not so ugly like she believes she's. Is this too romantic for a guy like Brian and I'm exaggerating a bit? Alright, without sweet words, but some tender gestures, ANYTHING that remotely screams ROMANCE. I need some romance in this Chapter as I need oxygen to breathe.

"My costume isn't exactly lovey-dovey, either. I've got the bugs crawling on me. Sure, I'm smaller, narrower, but-"

"The idea of being attacked by you might be spooky, but even if you can hold your own most of the time, people don't imagine getting in a hand to hand fight with you and feel scared. It's your power that's scary. Me? I think people look at me and they can imagine me pounding them into a bloody pulp, or worse. My power's inconvenient, it's spooky, but it's not the scary thing."
"You can't really see your darkness, though."
He shook his head, "I know where it is, but I don't really see it."
"I think you underestimate what it's like."
"Maybe. But my point is that people are more likely to run than stick around and talk when I'm approaching. You can take your bugs off the table, make it clear they aren't a threat, and people feel less threatened, they're willing to hear you out."
"Maybe. But if that's the case, don't give them a chance to run."
"What? Pop out from around a corner, scare the living daylights out of them, then offer them a job?"
"Sure. Why the hell not? Or have Imp break into apartments and leave a card."
"I don't think that would send the right message. It's vaguely threatening."
"You're vaguely threatening. If your prospective hires can't deal with that much, then they probably won't handle the job all that well, either. If you can't find anyone, then maybe I send some of my people your way to help get you started, or you could shell out for some decent mercenaries."
"Maybe."
"There's options. Don't stress about it. Whatever else happens, we have a few days before we decide on the next leg of our plan. Let's relax. Movie?"
"Sure."
I stood from my bed and began going through the box of DVDs that Coil had supplied with the TV. Most were still in the tight plastic wrap that they'd been bought in. I looked through, then handed some to Brian before turning back to the bag to keep browsing.
What the hell were we supposed to watch? I didn't want anything that would ruin Brian's mood or remind him what had happened, so horror was probably out, I was sick of the high intensity stuff, but I couldn't stand romance or bad comedies.
"Going back to the earlier topic," Brian said, "The subject of leadership, being in charge…"
I winced.
"You took over today. Are you wanting that to be a permanent thing?"
I turned around. "No. Not permanent. Just until-" I stopped short. How to put it?
"Until?"
"When I was getting really obsessive about what I was doing, when I was losing sleep and making mistakes, I deferred control."
"To Trickster," Brian said. I could see a shadow pass over his expression.
"Yeah. And that's a bad example because it didn't work. It's just that we both know you're not getting enough rest. So maybe I can pick up the slack in the meantime."
Brian sighed. He didn't look any happier.
"I don't want to make you unhappy," I said. "I'm not wanting to oust you, or co-opt your role permanently or completely. You were the leader, even if we didn't really establish an official title over it. But we can divide the duties for the time being. Tattletale handles the information angle of things, I maybe keep Bitch reined in and handle the spur of the moment calls, while you handle Regent and Imp and all the rest."
"Which is less than it sounds like, especially when you and Tattletale contribute on 'the rest' in little ways."
"No-" I started, then I sighed. "Maybe, yeah. I don't want to come off as manipulative or anything. Like I said, I don't want you to be unhappy, but at the same time I do want the whole team to get by in the meantime."
"You don't sound manipulative," he said. His fork hit the plate with a clatter. "Jesus, this sucks. I know you're right. I know this is for the good of the team, and if I could just get over this shit-"
"It's not that easy. Don't do yourself a disservice and expect too much."
"My whole life, I've been bigger than my peers, I've been stronger than most. Spent my time around pretty powerful guys. Boxers, martial artists, other criminals. I didn't have many friends, but they were the people who were around me, you know? And they were the types to go after you if you show any weakness."
"You get shot, nobody's going to call you a wimp. I don't see why it's different if the damage is mental or emotional instead of physical."
"I know, but you're not getting it. I was the type to go after someone if they showed a vulnerability. Wasn't until I'd had my powers about a year, Aisha tells me I was being an asshole, just like one of her stepdads used to be. So I tried to be better, but I always wanted to protect her, always wanted to help others. Teach you and Alec to fight, step up and take charge when a situation demanded it. Sometimes when a situation didn't."

Ok, so Brian admits that he was some kind of a bully before Aisha brought him on the right track and he is grateful to her for this. I love this Aisha character more and more, she's annoying and such a huge pain in the ass sometimes, but she always means well and her heart is in the right place, and I can't stop but admire how much strength and ambition to see her loved ones being ok this little girl have in her heart. People always say that Worm is a dark story. I don't think that this story is so dark like it is said. With such great and warm characters doing great and lovely (even little) things, no story can be too dark.

"Yeah."

"So it isn't just about me trying to adjust. Christ, it's me having my world turned upside down. It's others protecting me, others helping me, others covering me in a fight, others taking charge. Aisha's the one fixing things for me. And you-"
"Me?"
"This thing with Coil. Don't think I'm so obsessed with what's going on with me that I don't see it. It's like a burden's fallen from your shoulders. You've got concerns, but you're more relaxed. You've got hope that you didn't have twelve hours ago, and it's dramatic enough that your posture's changing. Even since we left the mall, it's like you're slowly convincing yourself that this is over, Coil's going to follow through, we'll move on to taking care of our territories and everything works out in the end."
I folded my arms. "I don't think that. Like I said, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"You say that, you tell yourself that, but I don't know that you're feeling it. I'm worried you're setting yourself up for a massive disappointment, and that you'll be affected enough that you won't be able to deal when it happens. But I'm mostly worried that all that will happen and I won't be in a position to help because I'm distracted by my own shit."
"You don't have to take up all the slack. We have other teammates."
"Lisa isn't exactly a heavy hitter, and let's not fool ourselves into believing that Alec, Rachel or Aisha are going to offer any meaningful emotional support."
"We'll manage," I said. "We've managed this far."
"More or less. Problem is, 'managing' is fine, up until we don't manage, if that makes any sense. Then it's over."
I sighed. "How did Genesis put it? There's no use in getting worked up over it if we can't plan around it or do anything to change it. So we'll each do our own imperfect jobs of taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves, and be as ready as we can forwhatever comes up."
He sighed.
"We're not perfect. We're flawed people, and as much as I want to help you in every way I can, I know I can't. I don't- I'm not good at this. I don't know how to act, or what to say. But I like you. I care about you. I'm going to do my best, even if I know it's not good enough. And I won't expect any more of you."
He nodded, but he looked glum.
"No hard feelings?"
He shook his head. He didn't look happy.
"I won't be leader forever."
"I don't know," he said. "Might be better that you keep the job, even if I do bounce back eventually."
"Except I don't want the job."
"That might be why you should take it. I don't know. Can we drop the subject?"
"Sorry."

Finally, they remember that they should do more interesting stuff than talking nonsense. Like...watching a movie together, having dinner together, sitting in each other arms, kissing....My little romantic heart is beating madly in my chest right now. They're going to kiss and maybe go further or not? See, my friends, this is the direct consequence of reading the liveblog of a girl with an unexpected strong romantic side. Everytime when moments like this appear in the story, she goes all: D'Awwwwwww.....her mind is broken and she can only....FEEL.
"being unable to think anymore, all she can is to droll like a motherfucking zombie over a possible hot scene happening next"

"It's okay. Just… heavy topics, with lots of ramifications. And it's hard to shake the negative thoughts. I'd rather talk along the lines of what you said before, about taking care of each other."

"And taking care of ourselves," I said. "Getting enough sleep, eating right."
"Okay," he said. There was a pause. "I slept well the other night."
"Then stay over. There's nothing pressing coming up, so we'll watch movies until we fall asleep."
He smiled a little, and for the first time in a long time there was a glimmer of that expression that had gotten my attention in the first place.
I put three DVDs into the drive so I could use the remote to play the next movie without having to get up, then pulled off the armor panels of my costume before settling into bed. My back pressed against his chest, and I could feel his breath against my hair.
I felt so self conscious that I could barely keep track of what was going on. I was thinking every unromantic thought there was: worrying if I had body odor from being in costume and running all day, wondering if I should get up to go to the bathroom now so I wouldn't have to go as desperately as I had the other morning.
I felt his hand on the zipper at the back of my costume, lowering it an inch, then stopping. A fingertip traced from the 'v' where the top of my costume parted, all the way up to the the nape of my neck, then back down. I could feel his fingers on the zipper, felt every tiny hair on my body standing on end.
A million thoughts raced through my head at once. All put together, they amounted to a mumbled, "Um."
There was no response from behind me. I could hear him breathing, I could feel the warmth of his breath, the slow rise and fall of his chest against my back. He was waiting for me to make my decision, and the thing that loomed largest in my mind was the sensation of his fingers on the tiny tag of the zipper, strong, insistent, there.
Any confidence I'd picked up in the past weeks or months fled. I felt as vulnerable as I had in early April, brought to tears in front of my worst enemies. Except this… wasn't wholly negative. Not entirely: I still felt acutely aware of every vulnerability, I thought of every part of myself that I tried to ignore when I looked in the mirror in the same way I might see my life flash before my eyes before I died.
Again, thinking that way. Why couldn't I think in a more romantic way at a moment like this? Was I broken in my own way?
"Let me get up and turn off the lights?" I asked.
His power blanketed the room. I could feel the phantom touches of it on against the thin fabric of my costume and my bare face, leaving me blind and deaf as we were plunged into darkness.
As I was plunged into darkness; he could see just as well. This totally wasn't what I'd wanted.
"That's not fair," I murmured.
He placed one hand on the side of my head to get me to turn his way, then pressed his lips against mine.
I didn't protest any further.

<3 THEY'RE...................

EXPRESSING THEIR CRUSH AND DESIRE FOR EACH OTHER THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE

Other comments are unnecessary. Let's leave them alone while they both give their innocence to each other and feel happiness for the first time after such a long time of unhappiness, and go to our damn businesses. <3

Little nice Chapter with a perfect ending. <3

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

blackarrow · Aug 30, 2018

rafuki22 said:
My God, without offending, but some of your theories make me want to laugh.
Also, five negative points for three positive points? It does not seem stable to me.

I'm not offended, buddy, I'm actually happy that some of my ridiculous theories make you want to laugh. But you have to admit that some of them turned to be TRUE (Dragon being AI, Siberian being a projection, Coil being Undersiders' boss, Sophia being Shadow Stalker)

When I'm good at something, even YOU should appreciate this.
Well, this new Chapter balanced the last one. Two more positive points: Emily going home and Fireflies mating. :lol

rafuki22 · Aug 30, 2018

blackarrow said:
I'm not offended, buddy, I'm actually happy that some of my ridiculous theories make you want to laugh. But you have to admit that some of them turned to be TRUE (Dragon being AI, Siberian being a projection, Coil being Undersiders' boss, Sophia being Shadow Stalker) When I'm good at something, even YOU should appreciate this.
Well, this new Chapter balanced the last one. Two more positive points: Emily going home and Fireflies mating. :lol

Hehehe, do you know how many chapters / arcs are left?
Enjoy the peace before the storm, I do not consider this spoiler because, well, it's obvious, even you already have your theories, and suspicions about coil, and we'll see if they become true.

blackarrow · Sep 1, 2018

Hello, beautiful people. Last time, Taylor did something UNIMAGINABLE. She did something that I never expected that she'll ever do. No, she didn't killed anyone yet- actually, I'm expecting her to do such thing sooner or later- neither she abandoned her thug life and embraced completely her heroic side. She just...had some funny times with her boyfriend.

Seriously, this is a twist to me, I didn't expected to see her going so far with her relationship, at least not so soon. I wonder what Danny will say about his daughter's little adventure (no, but I'm kind of obsessed right now to know how he'll react). I can imagine the conversation between them (if its entirely honest) going like this:
Taylor: Dad, I'm a parahuman with the ability to control bugs.
Danny: Its ok, Taylor, you're still my child.
Taylor: Dad, I'm a villain, working for a unscrupulous kingpin who's also a parahuman and I help him to take over the City.
Danny: Its ok, Taylor, I still love you.
Taylor: Dad, I tortured and almost killed a hero in front of his own dad.
Danny: Its ok, my child, I understand.
Taylor: Dad, I lost my virginity to my new boyfriend.
Danny: OUTRAGEOUS!!! Go to you room, young lady. You're GROUNDED!
This is how every dad in the world would react, I guarantee you this.

We have an fresh new Interlude. My speculations? Birdcage- I'm DYING to read another Birdcage Interlude especially since there are so many interesting characters jailed there, including two characters I like a lot (Amelia and Marquis) and few more that I want to know more about.
Another speculation: Eidolon's backstory.
And the last one: Defiant and Dragon looking after S9. Seriously, I kind of miss those fuckers. Especially Jack and Bonesaw, the quintessence of S9. I don't give a shit about Hookwolf and Manton, but Jack and Bonesaw...this is something attractive at these monsters that make me miss them even if- at the same time- I want Defiant to turn them inside out and liquefy their organs. Jack and Bonesaw- they're basically monsters that I hate with a burning passion but I'll miss them once they're gone. WELP! Wildbow, what the hell, man? What you did to me? Interlude 16 (Donation Bonus #2)

Heavy footsteps carried him through a crowd of people who were having the worst days of their lives. There were doctors and nurses who might never be able to return to the careers they had worked so long to achieve. He saw new parents, almost all in their twenties and thirties, huddled close and openly weeping or staring into space with puffy red eyes. There were family members trying to give them support, not knowing how. Not that the extended family would be suffering any less. Police officers and detectives were trying to gather statements, well aware that the families wouldn't know anything pertinent. Some were standing by, notepads in hand, unwilling or unable to proceed with their witnesses.

He'd known this feeling, once. To be the bystander, watching the aftermath, agonized as much by the inability to help, the lack of knowledge about what he should do as by the tragedy itself. To have it happen again and again. He banished the memories before they could take hold. It was easier to distract himself and think about the work. If there was no work to be done, he would let himself slip into that other state of mind, seeing the world coming apart, ways things could fit together.
But right now, he would focus on the job.
He glanced at the window. Four or five hours ago, these same parents might have been standing outside the window, watching their new babies sleeping. Now there was only a sheet taped up to block the view, marked for what it was by a yellow 'x' of police tape.
Keep walking. Something nagged at him as he set his right foot down, like a pebble in his boot, except not. He reached out, as if he were trying to move a finger, but the artificial nerves were hooked into his suit, and the impulse didn't go anywhere in his body. He felt the air shift as the openings in his mask sealed shut. He sent out another command and the microphone came online.
When he spoke, only his ears and the microphone heard his voice. "Note to self. Prosthetics in right leg feel alien. I should check the treads on my old boots, see if one of my legs was longer than the other, maybe try to dig up recordings of myself to match my new gait to my old one. Should time adjustments to coincide with next procedure."

FUCKING DEFIANT, MAN. My third speculation was right. Defiant walking in the hospital who was apparently under the most brutal and heartless attack that I ever seen in this story since its beginning.

Thank you, Wildbow, for making this TERRIBLE CRIME offscreen, but its still the most terrible crime one can think of. BABIES WERE KILLED. BABIES KILLED IN THE NURSERY.

Fuck this! I'm not ready for this start, I'm not fucking ready....Its hard for me to read about a single child being killed, but babies....This is...Ok, I need to fucking calm down and remember that this is a work of fiction, not something real....even if babies are killed in real life too. I think that, after I'll end this Interlude, I'll have to watch TONS of funny videos with children and animals to forget about what I just read. Alright "takes a deep breath and wipes away few wild tears" Who are the murderers? Not hard to guess, right? Fucking S9. Only they're heartless and evil enough to kill defenseless babies.

Note made, he shut off the microphone, opened the vents. He saw two women embracing one another, eyes red, staring at him as he passed through the last of the gathered crowd. They were hoping for the impossible, willing it. But bringing their child back wasn't in his hands. The best he could manage would be revenge. Or justice. The line between the two got pretty damned thin at times like this.

The local sheriff was waiting for him as he approached the waiting room.
"Defiant?" the sheriff asked. She looked small, mid-sixties, gray-haired. He suspected she was someone who had gleaned some experience in Boston or Brockton Bay and then 'retired' out to a smaller town in the middle of nowhere. She wouldn't have expected to face a situation like this in her retirement, nobody would, but she was holding herself together in a way that suggested she had some experience to fall back on. She'd lost officers, and the town was small enough that people she knew would have been among the casualties, but she was all business, her chin set, her small dark eyes hard with determination.
He liked her right away.
"Yes ma'am," He shifted his spear to his left hand, extended his right hand to shake hers.
"Miranda Goering. Sheriff. No need for that kind of formality here." She sounded like she said something similar on a routine basis. She frowned. "I… would have a hard time expressing just how much I appreciate your being here."
How was he supposed to respond to that? He couldn't think of a response.
She was studying him. Her eyes settled on his weapon, the fourteen foot long spear. "How on Earth do you carry that spear indoors?"
"It folds, and it can contract to be half the length," he said.
"I see," she said. She shook her head, as if stirring herself from idle thoughts. Back to the nightmare. "Do you want to start in the nursery?"
He shook his head. "No. I can guess what happened, and I doubt there'll be anything I can use there. Show me the other scenes."
Wordlessly, she turned and led him to the stairwell. He noted the gouges on the walls. Two or three inches deep, with blood spatters following each. Plastic had been taped down over each individual mark and spatter. Evidence cards were stuck next to each. He could guess the culprit. Jack.
Another impulse sent to his hardware, and his spear broke down into three loosely connected sections as they made their way down to the next floor. A practiced motion let him catch the weapon under his arm. "You have any local parahumans?"
"Three. Nothing notable. Edict and Licit, a low-rated master and a low-rated striker. We also have one villainess who occasionally tries to make it in one of the big cities and then retreats back home when she can't cut it. Calls herself Damsel of Distress."

Sheriff Miranda is ONE BRAVE WOMAN. Despite seeing the most EVIL THING a "human being" can do, she's still strong enough to talk to Defiant and answer his questions. Hats off to you, Miranda, another non-powered person who prove to be a brave individual in such a crazy world.

Alright, so I have the confirmation that S9 are responsible of the deaths of the little ones. RIP, little angels, hope you didn't suffered before you died.

We have two more heroes and one villain. Edict: since they're Master, I think their power is to give people an order and force them to listen it, no matter how awful that order is. Licit: A Striker with the power to make all the forbidden stuff...not forbidden. I dunno, judging by their name alone, this is what they should do, even if its not very Striker-like. Edict seems more easy to guess than Licit even if I might be wrong about their true power. Damsel of Distress...I think I saw- completely accidentally- a picture with her (she was next to Amelia and Victoria). She had white hair and very long claws in that picture. Possible her power is to scream after help, pretending to be helpless then kill anyone who'll be eager enough to help her with her giant claws.

He reconnected his spear as they passed through the door. "I know her. Mover and shaker. Storms of unevenly altered gravity, time and space. Edict and Licit keep her in check?"

"They manage with our help. Why do you ask?"
"The Slaughterhouse Nine are recruiting. Their numbers are down, and they'll be looking for a quantity of new members more than they're looking for quality. At least until they're stable enough that they can afford to be picky. Once they can, they'll replace the weakest recruits with better ones. I don't want them to get that far."
"I understand. But would they want her? Damsel of Distress? Her lack of control over her power holds her back. I won't say she isn't a problem, but she's never been a priority threat to anyone."
"She's a heavy hitter. They can give her control, or they can use that lack of control. Let's not forget that they might be looking at Edict and Licit. I'll need you to send me their files as well, please."
"Of course."
He didn't really need the files. The PRT had provided access to everything except the highest level secured files. He suspected that Dragon would be able to gain access to those if the need arose. Still, asking the sheriff had let him gauge whether she was really as cooperative as she seemed, and her level of connection to the hometown heroes. There had been no resistance, which was reassuring.

Ok, I was so fucking wrong about Damsel in Distress' power. It looks like she actually have ONE HELL OF A POWERFUL ABILITY. She can create storms that can affect gravity, space and time. I guess her power is a bit similar with Bakuda's bombs. Bakuda made bombs with time and space effects, fucking some of the most powerful parahumans with them. Damsel in (NO) Distress can trap people into her storms and fuck them up forever. But she doesn't have control over her power, which is a good thing, especially if she'll become part of S9. She can kill herself if she's not careful enough. But'm sure that Bonesaw will help her with getting more control over her power. Imagine what a Damsel in Distress in full control would do. Defiant and Dragon, pray to all the gods you know that S9 will NEVER recruit Nilblog. Because someone like Nilblog will make S9 almost unbeatable. You have enough troubles even without Nilblog.

She led the way to the area at the front of the ground floor. They stopped at the perimeter of the scene. He could see the path that Hookwolf had traveled, the bodies and body parts that littered the area, each covered by sheets or squares of cloth. There was little to be done about the blood. Every officer present was from out of town, and everyone was staying to the edges of the area. There was more evidence than there was ground to tread on.

Defiant examined the area. "They hit the nursery first, Jack and Siberian moving elsewhere in the building. Your officers got the call, but didn't have enough details to know what they were getting into. They came in through the emergency room here, and Hookwolf was waiting for them. Am I correct?"
"Yes," Sheriff Goering said, staring down at the sheet in front of her. Her composure was slipping, emotion seeping into her posture and expression, softening that hardness.

Hookwolf killed the babies? Alright, Hookwolf became full S9 member. Even if one could blame Agnosia Miasma for his sudden attachement and love for S9, this is NO excuse. Hookwolf was always evil, a sadistic asshole who enjoyed making dogs fighting in ring, a fanatical nazi who killed people because he didn't liked their skin color, a "person" who liked to torture and inspire fear in everyone around him (with the exception of the men and women LOYAL to him). He was a monster already, he only changed the sides, leaving racist monsters for psychopathic monsters. So, I'm sure he's responsible for the Massacre of Babies.

Again, he wasn't sure what to say. He needed her in control, but any reassurance threatened to make things worse. He didn't want to upset her, but everything about this was upsetting. There was no denying that. She would regret it if she broke down in tears here, and it would waste his time when he needed to be in pursuit.

"Tell her it's not her fault," Dragon spoke in his ear.
"It's not your fault," he told the sheriff. "They planned it this way. I would guess they controlled the information that was reported to your station to keep you in the dark, then would have had Hookwolf sitting in the lobby in his human state, indistinguishable from anyone else that was waiting for a turn."
"That fits what we know," she replied. She looked up at him.
"They have years of practice in this, and this is what they're doing, ninety-nine percent of the time. Hit isolated areas, terrorize. Sometimes it gets reported in the media, because it's sensationalist, and sometimes it goes unreported-"
"Back on track. Cut the digression."
"-There was nothing you could have done differently, knowing what you did," he finished, feeling like he was leaving his explanation incomplete. If it were him on the other side of things, he'd want the full picture, but he would take Dragon's advice.
"You're right. But that doesn't make it much easier."
"No," he agreed. "I don't expect it would."
The lens of his right eye clicked through multiple frequencies and resolutions, until the scene stood out in high detail. The blood shone ultraviolet, and even particles of dust were highlighted. The entire area stood out with fingerprints, footprints and frost-like patterns where air currents had layered dust over walls and windows. He began to pick his way through the scene, setting his feet down only where there wasn't any evidence to be damaged.
"You're hunting them?" she asked him.
"Yes."
"Will you do me a favor?"
"If I can."
"Talk to me? Give me some assurance that some good will come of this? That you'll be able to track them down, because of what happened here, and that you'll be able to stop them?"

Please, Defiant, give Miranda some assurance that you'll find and KILL those fuckers without mercy, in the same way they killed so many people. She needs some promises, poor woman, she must be so broken inside, even if she's trying hard to appear strong "hugs Miranda". Amazing how Dragon- an AI- is teaching Defiant- a human- how to talk with his fellow humans. Defiant's social skills are ABSOLUTE ZERO. He have good intentions, but he seems to be unable to understand and have a hard time to reproduce human behavior, he's like a robot on the inside- and I'm saying this not because he partially turned himself into a robot- its like he doesn't have emotions or he DOES have emotions (after all, he have a crush on Dragon

) but he doesn't know how to use them. I think he was like this even before getting his power (just like Rachel was a feral child even before triggering; her power made her personality worse, but didn't changed it too much). Colin was a cold and apparently emotionless man and after triggering, Armsmaster become even more colder, like a robot pretending a be a human. But Defiant decided to change this, turning into a less arrogant jerk and trying to understand how to be HUMAN from the girl that he likes and who, despite being an AI, proves to know about humanity more than Colin and Armsmaster ever knew.

He stared at the landscape around him, all white, gray and the brown-red of drying blood. It was washed out, stark. The magazines and brochures had been covered by arterial spray and clothing was hidden beneath sheets.

"Give it to her straight," Dragon urged him.
"He was waiting here," he pointed to a chair. "The blood and the way the bodies fell, Hookwolf wasn't holding anything back from the moment he made his move. A walking chainsaw massacre. I'm trying to look at how it played out, so I can read something into how they're operating and where their priorities are."
"How?" Goering asked.
He saved the settings of the lens and then switched to a radiograph-ultrasound reading. The world was cast in monochrome, now, and he could see the vague shapes of the bodies under the sheets, light and dark painting a picture of densities rather than light. He closed his mask so the sheriff wouldn't overhear and spoke into the microphone, "Count the skulls."
"Twenty two."
"Twenty two bodies," he spoke aloud, "In the waiting area alone. It seems like too many for a town this size, this time of night."
"We're the only real hospital for this part of the county. We get people from neighboring towns flying in by ambulance or helicopter."
"I see. Even so, it's more than I would have guessed. I suspect there was some announcement across the hospital, as the attacks started. The way people were clustered here, they were probably ordered to stay put and stay calm. Your officers enter and Hookwolf attacks. There's hesitation from the bystanders. People are caught between perfectly rational self-preservation and the authority of the hospital staff who didn't have the full picture."
"Don't assign blame," Dragon whispered. "The Slaughterhouse Nine are the ones in the wrong here."
"He lunges across the waiting area to the doors, cutting off retreat and tearing through anyone in his way. This is new to him. He's used to fighting people who resist, people with powers and law enforcement officers with the technology to fight him. This gives me the impression of a fox in the henhouse. The crowd turns to flee for the hallways, and he cuts them off there, herds them towards the center of the room, finishes them off."
He could see the pain on the Sheriff's face, but she was holding up. "And that's useful?"
Defiant nodded. "Hookwolf was largely content doing what he was doing in Brockton Bay. He viewed himself as a warrior, a general, and there was a degree of honor in what he did. He wasn't honorable, but he followed a code. The person who nominated him for the group, Shatterbird, is no longer a member. So why did he join? Our working assumption was that there were threats on some level, extortion. But he's shifting focus too quickly. Adopting a new mindset. It's possible Jack Slash convinced him in another way."
"Or he's under their control," Dragon said, communicating over their personal channel.
"…Or he's being coerced," Defiant said, for the sheriff's benefit. "An implant, something that's turned him into a puppet."

I doubt Hookwolf is mind controlled by anyone, he's doing what he WANTS to do because he have the heart of a monster, just like almost every single nazi who appeared in this story so far. Even Purity, the apparently "good" nazi", hates people who doesn't share her skin color or "morals", almost leveled an entire City, killed innocent people, and she dislikes her stepson, the kind and gentle Theo, only because he looks physically so much like his father (I forgot to mention Theo among my favorite characters, sorry; he's indeed one of my favorite characters and a great example that we should not judge children after their parents

). Her only redeeming quality is her love for Aster. Nazis SUCK in this story just like they SUCK in real life. Hookwolf is now loyal to S9 because of the Miasma, yes, but he kills babies because this is how he always was: a fucking ruthless and brutal killer. Not so hard to understand.

He looked over his shoulder at the Sheriff, but she wasn't venturing a response.

Back to the job. He pointed with his spear, where Hookwolf had been seated, then traced the path the villain had taken. Front door, then one hallway, then the other. A loose 'z'. People had clustered around the middle of the room, and he'd leaped into the midst of them to finish them off.
Defiant's eyes shifted to the front desk. There was blood spatter there, but it was the furthest point from the path Hookwolf have traveled. It would have been his last destination before he moved elsewhere.
Defiant used the lens setting to watch for blood spatter and footprints as he made his way behind the desk.
There were more bodies. One was propped up against the wall, and the stains that were soaking through the sheet were more brown than red. He'd had his lower abdomen opened. The last to die.
With his spear's point, Defiant lifted the sheet away from the man's head. Young, head shaved, a tan collared shirt with a star on the shoulder and a kevlar vest. His arms and hands were mangled beyond repair. Defiant studied the area, noting the presence of footprints, then replaced the sheet.
His progress out of the area was slow, and not entirely because he was trying to preserve evidence. He needed to think, to draw the entire picture together and confirm what he was saying before he addressed the sheriff.
"Find anything?" she asked.
"Your deputy went down fighting," he said. "Tooth and nail."

This deputy DESERVES a fucking post-mortem prize for the BRAVEST DEPUTY OF THE YEAR. RIP nameless deputy who fought like a beast against a literal beast. He knew that he wouldn't stand any chance against such a bloodthirsty warrior with superpowers, but he still fought like a lion, trying his best to protect the babies and the medical personnel. I'm a bit angry at Defiant's lack of emotions but I understand him. Its very hard to act like a human for someone who doesn't know how to act like a human. At least, he's MORE HUMAN than every single S9 member.

Her jaw clenched, and he could see her eyes glisten. She stared hard at the wall.

"He couldn't have won. Not against Hookwolf. But I think he gave us what we needed."
"Did he?"
"The aftermath of the fight suggests Hookwolf was in control of his actions. What's more, I think Jack Slash is grooming him. The general and the cutthroat, playing off one another, educating each other in their respective disciplines, so to speak. Jack's going to want to keep this interplay going, maintain Hookwolf's interest and keep him from getting restless. What's the nearest town?"

See? Told you that Hookwolf isn't mind or bodily controlled by anyone. He's in perfect control of his actions. I think that the effect of Miasma is long time gone and he recognizes S9 members but he won't abandon them or fight against them because he is impressed by their fighting skills (a true warrior at heart will always be impressed when they meet other warriors as good as them), he considers them warriors like him and he admires them, honestly wanting to be part of their team. Mayber Jack have an influence over him, I won't deny this, but a big part of his sudden switch of sides was played by himself and himself alone. He found the ideal warriors in S9 members and their support and freedom to do whatever he wants without anyone being able to stop him. If he wants, he can kill hundreds of black people in a single day and Jack and Bonesaw will just watch and applaud and encourage him to kill even more people. He's feeling like he's the greatest warrior ever in his own little bloody world.

"Prescott."

"Second nearest?"
"Enfield."
"Thank you," he said. "I'm going to talk to my partner, join her in paying a visit to Damsel of Distress if she hasn't already wrapped that up, then we'll be leaving. With luck, we'll be right on their heels."
"Execute the motherfuckers."
"I'll damn well try."
He extended a hand, and she shook it. He turned to leave, sending nervous impulses to the computer system in his suit, drawing up a map of the hospital and overlaying it with the image he was seeing on his visor. He made his way to the exit and briskly walked toward the field where he'd parked the Uther suit.
"Talk to me, Colin? What's the thought process?"
"Hookwolf gutted the deputy and then stood by while he died a slow, painful death. Footprints on the other side of the room are probably Jack's, if you look through the feed. His back would have been to the filing cabinet."
"I see it. Hookwolf doesn't have a reason to inflict a slow, painful death if he's just a puppet under Bonesaw's control."
"That's my line of thinking. From the looks of it, he was standing there longer than Jack. If Jack moved upstairs, which matches with the gouges in the stairwell, then he was leaving Hookwolf there to watch the man die over the course of minutes. The deputy was someone strong, ferocious, a warrior, which is how Hookwolf identified himself. This wasn't just killing, but rejoicing in the cruelty of it, the feeling of superiority over the fallen. I think what Jack was trying to instill in Hookwolf, challenging him to alter his code and be something darker."

"Execute the motherfuckers." Damn, Miranda, you're the best sheriff.

They also deserve to be tortured first, before being executed, but knowing how dangerous and cunning they're, its better to not waste time trying to torture them if you have a chance to kill them. Defiant, Dragon, you have my full support in your crusade against devils who pretend to be humans ~~(I'll still miss Jack and Bonesaw if they'll die even if I'll be so happy with their deaths)~~. I still don't know how much influence Jack have over Hookwolf (who was always a dark and evil man), but my theory that Jack influenced Bonesaw (who's still an immature emotional child, despite everything) might be right. What if he was the one who made her like this, by promising her that he'll help her with her power but instead he fucked up with her mind so much that he BROKE her, turning her into his sadistic and eager to help assistant/puppet. He tried to do the same with Amelia and possible that he'll repeat his strategy with Damsel of Distress too. If this is the truth, then I feel a pang of pity for what PAST Bonesaw had to endure. I said PAST Bonesaw, not the PRESENT one. Its a difference. The PRESENT Bonesaw is changed beyond any redemption. Even if she'll be "free", one day, from Jack's influence, I don't think she'll ever return to the PAST Bonesaw again. She might either take his place or become a freelancer supervillain.

I'm sorry that I have to stop now but this Interlude is long and I have to wake up tomorrow early. I'll continue with it as soon as possible.
What a DARK yet exciting Interlude! I still need to watch my funny videos before going to sleep. I need to clean off my mind- as much as possible- of the images of massacred babies.
Good night and sleep well, my friends.

blackarrow · Sep 1, 2018

rafuki22 said:
Hehehe, do you know how many chapters / arcs are left?
Enjoy the peace before the storm, I do not consider this spoiler because, well, it's obvious, even you already have your theories, and suspicions about coil, and we'll see if they become true.

I know that there are 30 Arcs + an Epilogue but I don't know how many Chapters. I didn't counted them.

rafuki22 · Sep 2, 2018

I have vacations.

blackarrow · Sep 2, 2018

Hello, friends. No more introductions, let's go right to the second part of this Dark but exciting Interlude Interlude 16 (Donation Bonus #2)

"I don't like it when you try to get into their heads like that."

"We have to be proactive. Predict. Get ahead of them, so we can stop them before they attack the next hospital, the next neighborhood or school. That means figuring out what they're thinking."
"I know. I just don't like it. Not with the way Mannequin approached you."
"Mannequin's dead."
"And he approached you for a reason."
He signaled for the Uther's cabin to open, then made his way inside. It was half the size of a commercial plane, outfitted with basic living quarters, and outfitted with long-range weaponry. The moment he was inside, the systems kicked into life, the pilot's chair turning to be in position for him to sit, monitors lighting up. He had only to think, and the images changed, the cursor flying across the screen with a thought to click on icons.
"…You're not responding."
"Sorry. Still getting used to this setup. I feel like a baby, still figuring out how to move my arms and legs."
"I hope it's a little more intuitive than that if you're airborne."
"Exaggeration for effect. I'm like a toddler, then. I can walk, but I could fall if I don't pay attention to what I'm doing during the more complicated bits."
He settled into the pilot's seat, and his senses opened up with vague 'tactile' responses from the Uther. He felt it lift into the air.
Monitors in front of him let him note Dragon's location.
"You didn't respond to my question, Colin. I was asking if you think I need to keep a closer eye on you."
"I don't think so," he replied. "I don't know how you could be closer. But it helps, having you there. I appreciated the tips with the sheriff. I would have fucked that up."
"It's not a problem."
"Any notice on Damsel?"
"Seems like we're too late. They got her."
His heart sank. "Got her in the sense that she's dead, or got her in the literal sense?"
"The latter."

Great, I just started the second part of this Chapter and there are some 'enjoyable' news: S9 managed to recruit Damsel of Distress.

They broke her pretty quickly, eh? Either that or she was already a psycho bitch who didn't see any problem to try to pass S9 trials and become their new member. Welcome to the Club of Fucked Up Supervillains, Damsel of Distress. Enjoy your staying and...fuck everyone else's days and nights. Imagine how dangerous this bitch will be if she'll have full control over her power and Bonesaw's safeguards. Another pain in the ass, coming to replace Mannequin and Crawler (I'm still under impression that S9 will find a way to bring Mannequin and Crawler back to their team- they're turned into statues, NOT dead, and now that Protectorate doesn't have any power and influence over Brockton Bay anymore, it won't be hard for Jack and Bonesaw to take back their members). Wait until S9 will decide that parahuman Junji Ito...I mean, Nilbog, would make a nice addition to the team. EVERYTHING WILL GO STRAIGHT TO HELL FROM THAT MOMENT. I think that the only way to stop S9 from "reviving" each time they're defeated is to kill Jack- without their leader, they'll be like blind mice trapped in an endless maze. No guide, no real purposes, no motivation, nothing. Jack is quintessence (heart and brain) of the entire team.

"Fuck!" One more to contend with. He remembered who he was talking to. "Sorry."

"I swore when I found out. Don't worry. I'm thinking Enfield. You?"
"We're on the same page. It's close enough, but not so close it's the next place we'd look." He shifted the Uther into motion and plotted a course for the Nine's next likely destination. He could see Dragon doing the same with her own suit.
They wouldn't be able to do this for long. They were only able to track the Nine like this because their quarry was unaware. It would only get harder, with Jack obfuscating the group's movements, with traps and misdirection, a contest of second guessing, trying to think more steps ahead.
He thought aloud, "We should have fought them sooner. In Brockton Bay."
"We weren't ready, on a lot of levels. You hadn't recuperated, and I didn't have anything that worked as standalone firepower. Better to wait, confront them with six suits at once."
He opened his mouth to respond, then stopped.
"Damn," she said, "I was hoping you weren't paying enough attention."
"I'm always going to listen when you talk. What happened to the other three suits?"
"Melusine is out of commission until I can build some replacement limbs. Azazel and the Astaroth-Nidhug were melted down."
He frowned. "The Undersiders?"
"And the Travelers. I pulled the remaining suits out of the city. Can't excuse the losses. Not with bigger fish to fry."
"That's… irritating."
"What part? That they get to keep doing what they're doing? Or that I didn't mention it?"
"I'm still officially a prisoner. I'm just a prisoner on a manhunt, now. If you want to control what info I get, I'll live."
"I can't tell if you mean that."
"I can't either. But right this minute, I'm more focused on the fact that the Undersiders and Travelers could hold their own against the full flight of seven. If they can get that far, couldn't the Slaughterhouse Nine be able to defeat the suits as well? And us with them?"
"It's the A.I. Substandard. They followed directions without an issue, but they aren't creative. The A.I. can't think outside the box, they don't plan or get creative. They just do the tasks they were assigned: sequester, fight, detain."
"It's your work. I know you're capable of designing outside of the box."
"I'm working with my hands tied, Colin. There's too many redundancies in my code, the rules against me making A.I.? They're still there. You gave me some detours, some workarounds, ways to get around them, but I'm still stumbling over them."
He tapped his fingers on his armrest, thinking. "I'll see what I can do."
"Please."
"I don't want to spoil your code. This isn't my field of study. It's not even something I've dabbled in. As a rule, anything I do to change it is going to make things less elegant."
"In that one department."
"And I'm legitimately afraid I'll do permanent damage if something runs out of control."
"I have backups. Weekly."

Awww, Defiant wants to help Dragon by removing her restrictions, but he's afraid that he might mess with her coding because altering AIs is not his specialty. Well, he's smart and he can study about AIs to try to understand how they work better, then when he'll have enough knowledge on the subject, he can help Dragon. He already knows a lot about technology, won't be hard for him to accumulate more information and use it properly. Besides, he already helped her with some stuff, he can help her further. I trust Defiant when it comes to everything about science. I kind of want and I don't want- at the same time- for Dragon to become entirely free. I like her and I want her to be happy in her new body, with the man she crushes on, and feeling like a normal human, doing whatever she pleases without any restriction imposed on her.

But what if she'll sudden decide: Fuck this, I don't want to be a hero anymore. What if I'll become a supervillain instead? The life of a villain is always much more interesting than the one of a hero -BOOM, we have evil Dragon without anyone staying in her way to stop her.

This is the main reason why I'm against this idea. Should they take the risk or not? I'm thinking at a solution of compromise: Defiant can remove her restrictions but he can place a single restriction on her- he'll take control over her everytime when he feels like she doesn't have good intentions and stop her from becoming an evil AI. She'll have to listen him and be unable to hurt him. This is the only way I'll accept without any objections a Free Dragon.

"Which means we'd have to bring you up to speed on the mission here. I'm saying it's dangerous. I like the you of right now more than the you of a week ago."

"That sounds almost romantic."
He smiled a little.
"Saw that."
He smiled wider. "You're bordering on the obsessive now."
"I can dial it back. How are the prostheses?"
"Holding up. Eye's working great."
"I saw," she replied.
He smirked.
She sounded legitimately embarrassed as she said, "Whoops."
"Don't worry. I knew you were watching. It's fine, good to have an extra set of eyes on the scene. Um. The other parts are fine. I made a note to fix my leg. I think it's a little too perfect. Feels uncanny. But I suppose you heard that."
"I don't listen in on any personal notes, just like I won't pry into any journals you keep or personal mail. The deal we struck with the PRT was that I would make sure you followed the rules. That's what I'll do. But your thoughts are your own."
"Alright."
"You don't sound overly concerned either way."
"I'm not, really."
"You let me know if you do start feeling uncomfortable."
"I can do that. Listen, there's no use in me getting deep into your code when we're going to get there in a matter of minutes. I'm going to look at my knees in the meantime, then maybe I'll refresh myself on your code if I have time before we land."
"Alright."
He glanced at one monitor, and windows opened to show images of the leg. He was able to draw the crude shapes that represented individual devices even when he wasn't looking at the screen. A triangle here, a circle there. Another window opened up with a line connecting it to the triangle, and he drew an identical triangle, began filling it with more shapes. By the time he had a fourth subwindow open, he was drawing from previous notes to copy over other schematics of older work, seeing where things could go. Everything could fit together. The waste energy of one system could help power another. Even on a molecular level, there were ways to harness the ambient radiation that was emitted by everything in the known universe. Some was infinitesimally small, but it was usable. That energy could be heterodyned, or redirected into loops long enough that they were near-infinite. Hyperefficient, dense energy generation that could benefit from being hooked up to more devices. It was the fundamental basis of his work: efficiency.
Which suited him well. Efficiency, intensity, focus were all the same thing in a sense, and they were his strengths. The flip side was that they weren't strengths when they were applied to relationships. Or to human relationships.

Their relationship is more romantic than 90% of the relationships in this story.

Not even Fireflies manage to be as romantic with each other as these two. A genuinely and filled with affection love story between an AI who wants to be human and a human who's ok with slowly becoming a robot. Only in Worm one can see this kind of love story.

I know what 'heterodyning' means, something related to radio-frequency waves of different frequencies combined to produce a new frequency, but can't stop thinking at Girl Genius (one of my favorite webcomics) and Agatha Heterodyne, its main heroine. Man, Sparks in GG are more sane than Tinkers in Worm. They're crazy too, especially when they're in their spark mode, but most of their craziness is CHILDISH compared with what I saw so far in Worm-verse with Tinkers. Sparks are more interesting in fucking with all the laws of physics for shit and giggles than murdering people left and right. And when they're murdering people, most of the time is an "unfortunate" accident (well, actually ancient Heterodynes were evil sparks who loved to make experiments on victims/kill them and they're the most close to the madness of Tinkers).

It seemed to be working for him with Dragon so far. Someone else might have bucked at the closeness of their partnership, the intimacy of it, her unending presence and watching eye. He understood that she thought faster, that she didn't sleep, didn't stop. She was fond of him and she was programmed to emulate people. Maybe she came across as intense at times, but that was simply a poor translation, normal behavior overclocked and given no chance to pause. He would watch for any problems just as she was keeping an eye out for the part of him that had drawn Mannequin's attention.

For now, his own obsessiveness, arrogance, and goal-oriented mindset would keep him focused on the Nine, push other concerns to the periphery of his attention. He could adjust to any of Dragon's peculiarities in the meantime. He could even enjoy them.
His lips quirked with another smile. She was amusing.

So cute in such a weird way, Dragon takes care to keep Defiant under relative control so he will never walk on Mannequin's steps and he's doing his best to accept Dragon with everything she have, good or bad. He also wants to free her, to help her becoming a real human being (or as close to a human being as an AI with free will can be). They complete each other and they're of great help for each other. They become indispensable to each other. Its like they're making the perfect ship in Worm. Not only romantic wise, but they're also excellent partners, very close friends, they can understand each other better than anyone else can understand any of them, while being loyal comrades in arms too.

<3 Sorry, Taylor, Brian, you're cute as partners, friends and lovers, but you don't have the beauty and intensity and passion that Defiant and Dragon's relationship have. Fuck me, Flesh and Wire became my favorite ship even if neither Dragon or Defiant is among my favorite characters.

"Okay. I'm done for now. Want to look it over while I get into the code?"

"Sure. You have eight minutes before you should get your stuff together."
He'd had to make a program just to get a handle on the code. It wasn't working with a fixed structure, but was instead a torrential waterfall of data, a river of lightning, a trillion eels weaving through one another in a singular mass. Deciphering it required that he think in an entirely different way. To actually change it was something else entirely. The rules Dragon was obligated to follow were a fundamental part of her self, and everything she remembered filtered through that.
He isolated a part of the program and set it to run in a loop so he could study what it was doing.
"Your design doesn't work," Dragon informed him.
"Does too."
"You inserted the nanomachine thorn generator into your leg, but your power source vents straight into your calf. You'd gradually roast your flesh from your bones."
"I'm inserting more of the same into my calf. Daisy chain."
"More self-alterations? Colin-"
"We've been over this."
"I was going to suggest we take some time tonight, play another round of ten by ten. At the rate you're going, there won't be a point."
"You're exaggerating."
"Not by much."
He could have responded, but he held back, stayed quiet. No use starting a fight now, not when they might be fighting the Nine shortly.
Ten by ten. The 'game' involved some interplay between him and her android self, physical contact, and rating the sensitivity of the contact on two scales of ten. It had started out as a means of calibrating the various sensations her 'body' experienced and ensuring his own prostheses weren't causing any damage to his nervous system, but things had progressed to inevitable, intentional conclusions.
Not the obvious conclusion. There was more to be done in refining her body and expanding her capabilities before they could take things that far.
Would he be more machine than she was by the time they got there?

DEFIANT IS A MAD SCIENTIST, Dragon, he's obviously insane, don't try to find logic in what he's doing. If he wants to turn himself completely into a robot, removing all the flesh and muscles and organs from his body until only metal and wires will remain behind, then let him do what his crazy mind is telling him to do with his body. I know that Dragon doesn't like at all the modifications Defiant is making to his body- she wants him to be human, not something like her, but she can't stop him once he decides to do something about himself or anyone else. He's stubborn as hell, he'll always be like this, besides- just like all Tinkers so far- he's obsessed with something (Bonesaw is obsessed with her evil art, Bakuda was obsessed with making people fear her, Mannequin "was" obsessed to kill people useful to society, Sphere was obsessed with helping people, Kid Win is obsessed with cool gadgets and heroic stuff). Defiant is obsessed with making justice no matter the price and punishing the criminals. Once a Tinker become obsessed with something, not even God himself will be able to stop him/her. Dragon is the only normal Tinker in this story, possible because her non-human nature.

On the other side of the coin, he had to wonder: could he afford to hold back? They were engaged in a battle of attrition against the Nine. In the grand scheme of things, there were also the Endbringers to consider. He'd gone too far in Brockton Bay, but the fundamental principle was right. They had to be stopped, if it was even possible, and he wouldn't complain if it was him who did the deed. If it was a question of going all out, holding nothing back, showing no compunctions and finally stopping the abominations, well, he'd do it all over again. He wouldn't trust the nano-thorns to the same extent; they apparently couldn't cut through the entirety of an Endbringer, but he'd do the same thing again.

And he'd feel the same regret he did now.
"You've gone quiet."
"Thinking."
"Three minutes before you take the thinking cap off and we get battle ready."
"That's fine. I'm thinking in circles anyways. In the interest of being useful, I'm trying to isolate your 'higher brain' code from the rest. You want to take a minute, maybe turn your attention to my leg's prosthesis again?"
"On it."
He began to select the outliers from the two distinct strains of code.
"Think about nothing in particular," he told her.
"Harder than it sounds."
"Think white. Or stare off into space."
He could see the code shift. He began to gradually narrow down the outliers.
Nothing too pertinent. It would help him to keep any changes from damaging the most essential parts of her, but nothing too useful.
Conversationally, he asked her, "The Undersiders are still holding the territory they did, then?"
"They kidnapped the Director long enough to get her to order the A.I. to stand down, got away from one altercation, then used some combination of Tattletale's power and the Director's knowledge to figure out that they could slow me down by knocking out cell towers. As far as I know, they're in a better position than they were."
"Damnation."
"How are you feeling about that? The Undersiders?"
"Psychoanalyzing me? I'm itching to stop them. If you asked me what I'd change, I don't know that I could name a thing I'd do different. I'd do everything over again, but do it better."
"You wouldn't get caught."
"There's that," he said, sighing. "And maybe I was too harsh in my judgement of Skitter. I was angry at her, I was tired, maybe that led me to label her with some malice she didn't have. In retrospect, yes, she made the decisions she did, but she had reasons for doing what she did."

Defiant feels bad for what he said/he did to Skitter. He regrets his words and reactions towards her, meaning that he changed more than I believed at first. He's turning into a robot when it comes to his body but he becomes more human when it comes to his judgement. I predict that, if they'll ever meet again and bury the hatchet, Defiant, Dragon will work with Skitter pretty well, maybe even become some kind of mentors for Skitter and guide her to do the right things for the right reasons. I won't be surprised if Skitter will end up seeing Defiant as a father figure to her. Enemies from yesterday can easily become allies of tomorrow, if they share their same goals and can understand each other.

Defiant, for admitting how wrong you're regarding Skitter, I APPRECIATE you. This Chapter made me appreciate you more even if I still have things to reproach you.

"In the same way you did."

"I wouldn't put it like that."
Dragon didn't respond. He swore under his breath, knew she could hear it.
"They took down our Azazel?" he asked, aiming to change the subject.
"Yes."
"Fuck," he muttered. It would have been useful to have, here.
He could see a blip in the code, well beyond the outliers he'd marked out.
"What were you just thinking?"
"Flight plan, battle strategy, and fixes to the Azazel hardware. I have the black box data."
"Think back through each of those things."
"We're going to be at our destination in less than a minute."
"Please?
There was a long pause, then again, the flare of data being altered well outside of the boundaries he'd noted. He opened up the full stream in the view window, spreading it across every screen in front of him.
"Keep going," he told her. The cursor flew between the seven screens, marking out areas in color to see where code was changing most radically. It was like the work he did with his own power, the smallest elements impacting everything else.
Like his own power…
He leaned back in his seat.
"What is it?"
"Either Andrew Richter was far better at designing A.I. than I suspected, or there's something else at play. You have any notes on your code from a few years ago?"
"We just reached Enfield, Colin."
"I'm only barely wrapping my head around this code as is. I'm worried that I'll lose track and this will all be gibberish to me if I look away. Notes on your code?"
"How far back?"
"Let's say in intervals of four years."
"Loading them onto the Uther's system. This isn't like you, Colin. Getting distracted? Making the Slaughterhouse Nine a lower priority?"
"Four years ago, I think it's the same. Hard to find flares like that and not think I'm cherry picking data."
"Colin. I admit I'm a little unnerved. Way you're talking, it sounds like Richter put some safeguard in place and I could fall apart any second."
"It's not that. Can you load up the earliest archive of data you have?"
"I'll have to clear away one of the other files."
"Do it. They're useless. They're the same thing as the most recent set."
He watched as the flow of data appeared. It was odd how he could look at it and she almost felt younger, like a musician might read music and hear it in his head. Only here, it was like looking at a video image of a girlfriend as a child.
And… more constrained. Certainly more advanced than anything else in existence on the planet, but things flowed. A led to B led to C. He sped through volumes of the data to hunt for a flare, glanced at the time markers. A year ahead. Two years.
No, he couldn't afford to pore through Dragon's entire lifetime. He closed the image, leaned forward and stared at the screen, the recent image of Dragon's code, caught in a three second loop in the midst of her plotting her design.
"What is it?"
"You're a tinker."
"This isn't a revelation, Colin."
"No. I mean, not just as far as the classification applies to you. You're a parahuman. I don't have time to hunt for it now, but at some point between now and a few years after your creation, you had a trigger event."
"How can I be a parahuman if I'm not human to begin with?"
"I don't know."
"I'm not even close to human. I might be trying to emulate one, but a sea cucumber's closer to being a human than I am. That doesn't make sense."

Ok, this revelation of Dragon triggering made me formulate two theories. One about Dragon and the other one about Andrew, her creator. Maybe Dragon is not entirely an AI, but she have an organic/biologic part of her 'brain'. Just like Defiant is a human with robotic parts, Dragon might be an AI with biologic parts in her software. Possible that Andrew created her with human parts and after his death, she was so affected that she triggered, becoming a Tinker in "human terms". If this theory will prove to be right, I think I'll like Dragon more, knowing that she's part human for REAL.

Another theory that I'm not sure at all if its true is that Andrew didn't died for real, but he lost his mind during Leviathan's attack and turned against his creation, by gathering a group of hackers, calling them Dragonslayers and himself Saint and trying to ruin Dragon. I'm sure that Saint is a Tinker with hacking specialty and he's obsessed with Dragon, but I doubt my theory because if he was Andrew, he wouldn't have any problem destroying Dragon since he would have know his own creation better than anyone. Its a little possibility for Andrew to be Saint.

"I don't know either."

"What does this mean?"
"Yet again, I don't know. But it's now my turn to remind you that we've got to carry on with our mission, see if we can't track down our targets. The four A.I. suits are close?"
"They'll be here within the minute."
"Good. But this thing with the data and your nature, it's important. A clue. I'm only mortal, I might not come out of this alive-"
"Don't say that."
"But it's true. I want to leave nothing to chance. So I'm going to leave a note, just in case the worst happens and we both die somehow. Instructions."
"To look at the code."
"To look at the code. The fact that you haven't noticed this yourself suggests there may be a mental block in place."
"I don't have a mind to put any mental block inside. I'm data."
"And the same limitations still apply. Just in case, we're going to make sure someone can look over the code if we don't make it back. Whatever happens,someone's going to page through your memory, get our first hard data on a trigger event. Ideal world, it'll be us. You can't remember it happening?"
"No."
"Well, we'll see just how well that data was erased. Or if it even was erased. Could be a block keeping you from accessing a very real memory. With luck, maybe a bit of a loophole like the one I created around your ability to create child A.I., we can unlock that memory, decrypt it or find a snapshot of it as it's in progress."
"To what ends?"
It was a good question. It took him a moment to conceptualize it into a complete thought.
"…Since the day I got my powers, I've seen myself as a soldier in a greater war. Good against evil, order against chaos, mankind against the likes of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Endbringers. It's a war on every front. And sometimes that's called for ugly choices. When we talked about unlocking the restrictions in your code, breaking down the barriers Andrew Richter was so careful to put in place, we talked about the idea that you and I could work together, give our side the upper hand in sheer firepower. And I think we can with a little more time, a little more work. With this? This snapshot, this recording of a trigger event in progress? Maybe we can get the upper hand inknowledge, too."
"I know what you're thinking. Reproducing trigger events, deciphering or even controlling the source of powers. This is the type of radical thinking I'm supposed to rein in while I'm working with you."
"Are you saying I'm wrong? That we shouldn't investigate?"
"No. We should. I'm worried about the can of worms this opens up, but we should."
"I don't see why you're so reluctant." He was already typing up the note to check the code, marking out the dates and times to investigate, the things to look out for. It was painfully abstract, but the right tinker or the right genius could find it. He opened the channels to deposit the files on the primary PRT server.
His computer froze.
"Dragon?"
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes," he said.
The speakers produced the sound of a sigh. "We won't put the note on anything the PRT can get at."
"Why?" he asked.
"That," she said, "Is a long story, and it's where I'm asking you to trust me and leave this for later discussion. Our priority right this moment is the Slaughterhouse Nine. I doubt we'll stop them outright, but we'll try. Six powered suits in all. I can't disobey the directive, and you can't let yourself lose track of the mission, or you'll never get back on it. I'll explain this after."
"You said you couldn't put the files on anything the PRT can get at?"
"I'm almost certain they already know whatever we stand to find out. I suppose it's unavoidable, given how close we are on so many levels, but you're getting drawn into another fight, with an enemy that may be on the same level as the Nine or even the Endbringers. An enemy I can't afford to fight face to face."
"Who?"
"I'm obligated to follow the laws of the land. To obey the local government, no matter who they are. When we're done here, whether we stop the Nine outright, see them escape yet again or lose the fight, you should ask me about Cauldron."

Cauldron being EVIL and comparable with S9 and Endbringers in their EVILNESS and how dangerous can be is confirmed by Dragon and Dragon doesn't know how to lie. I trust her with this information, my suspicions about Doctor Mother being an evil bitch were confirmed. I can seriously see Doctor Mother being willing to kill a bunch of babies if this frightening action will serve her goals. That woman is capable of everything. Just like Jack. Thank you, Dragon, for showing me how right I was. So, after you'll finish with S9, the next bigger enemy will be Cauldron? I wish you all the good luck in the world. But Cauldron will never be so exciting as S9. No matter how BAD and ultra-crazy-violent they're, S9 are and will remain, without doubt, the best supervillain team in this story. I don't hate any villain in this story with the same intensity I hate S9 (not even Heartbreaker or Coil) yet I'm not excited/interested in any villain in this story as much as I'm interested in them. Cauldron are super-smart and super-dangerous villains, but they don't have the crazy attractiveness that S9 have when it comes to read about them and and be so eager to see what they're planning to do next.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

rafuki22 · Sep 3, 2018

blackarrow said:
Hello, friends. No more introductions, let's go right to the second part of this Dark but exciting Interlude Interlude 16 (Donation Bonus #2)

Great, I just started the second part of this Chapter and there are some 'enjoyable' news: S9 managed to recruit Damsel of Distress. They broke her pretty quickly, eh? Either that or she was already a psycho bitch who didn't see any problem to try to pass S9 trials and become their new member. Welcome to the Club of Fucked Up Supervillains, Damsel of Distress. Enjoy your staying and...fuck everyone else's days and nights. Imagine how dangerous this bitch will be if she'll have full control over her power and Bonesaw's safeguards. Another pain in the ass, coming to replace Mannequin and Crawler (I'm still under impression that S9 will find a way to bring Mannequin and Crawler back to their team- they're turned into statues, NOT dead, and now that Protectorate doesn't have any power and influence over Brockton Bay anymore, it won't be hard for Jack and Bonesaw to take back their members). Wait until S9 will decide that parahuman Junji Ito...I mean, Nilbog, would make a nice addition to the team. EVERYTHING WILL GO STRAIGHT TO HELL FROM THAT MOMENT. I think that the only way to stop S9 from "reviving" each time they're defeated is to kill Jack- without their leader, they'll be like blind mice trapped in an endless maze. No guide, no real purposes, no motivation, nothing. Jack is quintessence (heart and brain) of the entire team.

Awww, Defiant wants to help Dragon by removing her restrictions, but he's afraid that he might mess with her coding because altering AIs is not his specialty. Well, he's smart and he can study about AIs to try to understand how they work better, then when he'll have enough knowledge on the subject, he can help Dragon. He already knows a lot about technology, won't be hard for him to accumulate more information and use it properly. Besides, he already helped her with some stuff, he can help her further. I trust Defiant when it comes to everything about science. I kind of want and I don't want- at the same time- for Dragon to become entirely free. I like her and I want her to be happy in her new body, with the man she crushes on, and feeling like a normal human, doing whatever she pleases without any restriction imposed on her. But what if she'll sudden decide: Fuck this, I don't want to be a hero anymore. What if I'll become a supervillain instead? The life of a villain is always much more interesting than the one of a hero -BOOM, we have evil Dragon without anyone staying in her way to stop her. This is the main reason why I'm against this idea. Should they take the risk or not? I'm thinking at a solution of compromise: Defiant can remove her restrictions but he can place a single restriction on her- he'll take control over her everytime when he feels like she doesn't have good intentions and stop her from becoming an evil AI. She'll have to listen him and be unable to hurt him. This is the only way I'll accept without any objections a Free Dragon.

Their relationship is more romantic than 90% of the relationships in this story. Not even Fireflies manage to be as romantic with each other as these two. A genuinely and filled with affection love story between an AI who wants to be human and a human who's ok with slowly becoming a robot. Only in Worm one can see this kind of love story. I know what 'heterodyning' means, something related to radio-frequency waves of different frequencies combined to produce a new frequency, but can't stop thinking at Girl Genius (one of my favorite webcomics) and Agatha Heterodyne, its main heroine. Man, Sparks in GG are more sane than Tinkers in Worm. They're crazy too, especially when they're in their spark mode, but most of their craziness is CHILDISH compared with what I saw so far in Worm-verse with Tinkers. Sparks are more interesting in fucking with all the laws of physics for shit and giggles than murdering people left and right. And when they're murdering people, most of the time is an "unfortunate" accident (well, actually ancient Heterodynes were evil sparks who loved to make experiments on victims/kill them and they're the most close to the madness of Tinkers).

So cute in such a weird way, Dragon takes care to keep Defiant under relative control so he will never walk on Mannequin's steps and he's doing his best to accept Dragon with everything she have, good or bad. He also wants to free her, to help her becoming a real human being (or as close to a human being as an AI with free will can be). They complete each other and they're of great help for each other. They become indispensable to each other. Its like they're making the perfect ship in Worm. Not only romantic wise, but they're also excellent partners, very close friends, they can understand each other better than anyone else can understand any of them, while being loyal comrades in arms too. <3 Sorry, Taylor, Brian, you're cute as partners, friends and lovers, but you don't have the beauty and intensity and passion that Defiant and Dragon's relationship have. Fuck me, Flesh and Wire became my favorite ship even if neither Dragon or Defiant is among my favorite characters.

DEFIANT IS A MAD SCIENTIST, Dragon, he's obviously insane, don't try to find logic in what he's doing. If he wants to turn himself completely into a robot, removing all the flesh and muscles and organs from his body until only metal and wires will remain behind, then let him do what his crazy mind is telling him to do with his body. I know that Dragon doesn't like at all the modifications Defiant is making to his body- she wants him to be human, not something like her, but she can't stop him once he decides to do something about himself or anyone else. He's stubborn as hell, he'll always be like this, besides- just like all Tinkers so far- he's obsessed with something (Bonesaw is obsessed with her evil art, Bakuda was obsessed with making people fear her, Mannequin "was" obsessed to kill people useful to society, Sphere was obsessed with helping people, Kid Win is obsessed with cool gadgets and heroic stuff). Defiant is obsessed with making justice no matter the price and punishing the criminals. Once a Tinker become obsessed with something, not even God himself will be able to stop him/her. Dragon is the only normal Tinker in this story, possible because her non-human nature.

Defiant feels bad for what he said/he did to Skitter. He regrets his words and reactions towards her, meaning that he changed more than I believed at first. He's turning into a robot when it comes to his body but he becomes more human when it comes to his judgement. I predict that, if they'll ever meet again and bury the hatchet, Defiant, Dragon will work with Skitter pretty well, maybe even become some kind of mentors for Skitter and guide her to do the right things for the right reasons. I won't be surprised if Skitter will end up seeing Defiant as a father figure to her. Enemies from yesterday can easily become allies of tomorrow, if they share their same goals and can understand each other. Defiant, for admitting how wrong you're regarding Skitter, I APPRECIATE you. This Chapter made me appreciate you more even if I still have things to reproach you.

Ok, this revelation of Dragon triggering made me formulate two theories. One about Dragon and the other one about Andrew, her creator. Maybe Dragon is not entirely an AI, but she have an organic/biologic part of her 'brain'. Just like Defiant is a human with robotic parts, Dragon might be an AI with biologic parts in her software. Possible that Andrew created her with human parts and after his death, she was so affected that she triggered, becoming a Tinker in "human terms". If this theory will prove to be right, I think I'll like Dragon more, knowing that she's part human for REAL.
Another theory that I'm not sure at all if its true is that Andrew didn't died for real, but he lost his mind during Leviathan's attack and turned against his creation, by gathering a group of hackers, calling them Dragonslayers and himself Saint and trying to ruin Dragon. I'm sure that Saint is a Tinker with hacking specialty and he's obsessed with Dragon, but I doubt my theory because if he was Andrew, he wouldn't have any problem destroying Dragon since he would have know his own creation better than anyone. Its a little possibility for Andrew to be Saint.

Cauldron being EVIL and comparable with S9 and Endbringers in their EVILNESS and how dangerous can be is confirmed by Dragon and Dragon doesn't know how to lie. I trust her with this information, my suspicions about Doctor Mother being an evil bitch were confirmed. I can seriously see Doctor Mother being willing to kill a bunch of babies if this frightening action will serve her goals. That woman is capable of everything. Just like Jack. Thank you, Dragon, for showing me how right I was. So, after you'll finish with S9, the next bigger enemy will be Cauldron? I wish you all the good luck in the world. But Cauldron will never be so exciting as S9. No matter how BAD and ultra-crazy-violent they're, S9 are and will remain, without doubt, the best supervillain team in this story. I don't hate any villain in this story with the same intensity I hate S9 (not even Heartbreaker or Coil) yet I'm not excited/interested in any villain in this story as much as I'm interested in them. Cauldron are super-smart and super-dangerous villains, but they don't have the crazy attractiveness that S9 have when it comes to read about them and and be so eager to see what they're planning to do next.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

Hahahahahahaha. I can't write much because im writing in the phone. And nothing is confirmed,i will win.

blackarrow · Sep 4, 2018

Hello, my friends. I'm impatient to start this new Chapter because I want to tell you what I saw today, when I was out. Guys, I think I saw....Brian. Or, our world version of Brian (since there are so many parallel world in Worm, I won't be surprised if OUR world have its own version of Brian).

So, I was walking on street and a young black man (a little older than Brian but tall and well-build just like him) suddenly passed by me, being all serious and pensive, dressed in a black shirt with white writing: Let the Darkness Rule. I had TROUBLES stopping myself from hugging the hell out of that guy.

I almost called him: Brian, is that you? but I controlled myself. Barely. I wonder how he'd have react if I'd have given him a hug. Man, I'm a walking disaster with my obsession for fictional characters. :lol Alright, back to Taylor's little but very eventful world. Let's see how happy she's in the company of her romantic, adorable, sweet boyfriend. Taylor...HAPPY? Brian...romantic and adorable? WTF I'm talking about here? Its like I'm talking about completely different characters, compared with the canon ones. Of course the real Taylor is unhappy, thinking that she doesn't deserve happiness in Brian's company, and worried that Coil will not keep his "promise" with Dinah, thinking at different possibilities of how to free Dinah herself, everything while kissing a very serious and anti-romantic Brian. Gosh, Fireflies are like an OLD MARRIED COUPLE compared with Flesh and Wires (Dragon and Defiant are way more romantic and cute together than, sadly, Taylor and Brian will ever be) :lol Monarch 16.7

Living in a city meant dealing with some recurring issues. Crime, having to lock the doors, congestion on the roads, crowds getting in the way on footpaths; stuff we dealt with so often that we considered it routine. We considered it background noise or we managed without even thinking about it. Construction work was something we couldn't dismiss so readily, something that always seemed to elicit groans and complaints. Maybe because it was so blatant, so grating, and it changed in tone, location and degree often enough that we couldn't adjust.

Not today.
No, I felt a level of satisfaction and security as the bulldozers and piledrivers went to work in my territory. For every car on the road, there were ten trucks carrying debris out and five trucks bringing materials in.
A lot of that would be Coil's doing, I knew. There was construction and clearing going on throughout my territory and building inspectors were checking blocks, all despite the warnings that were going around regarding big, bad, unpredictable Skitter, and that would be because he greased palms or the construction companies at work were his.
Damn it, I felt restless. I wanted to go to Coil's territory and discuss Dinah, and I might have, if Trickster hadn't been the first to speak up and declare he was going to confront Coil. I suspected that Coil wouldn't release Dinah this soon, and if he was under too much pressure to hear Trickster out, he certainly wouldn't listen to me. If he did have something to offer Trickster, he wouldn't welcome my distraction. I had to wait. I hated it, but I recognized it as the sensible route.
Trickster's focus was on Noelle, though, and nothing I'd seen indicated that Coil had made any advances on that front. All I knew, really, was what Tattletale had told me and the little things that had come up in our brief discussion with the Travelers about our strategy. She'd been a girl, maybe not in the best of health.
It was possible Trickster had been trying to save Noelle in the same way I was trying to save Dinah. The circumstances were different, obviously: Coil was the best answer the Travelers had to Noelle's situation, but he was the cause of Dinah's.
Still, it made me think.
I was officially hands-off in my territory. I wasn't going to deviate from orders now and risk upsetting Coil. That meant no costume, no showing my face, no intervention in the management of things.
Which turned my thoughts to Sierra. As far as my ability to sense things with my swarm went, Sierra was easier to identify than many. Her dreads gave her a distinct profile.
I couldn't find her.
I could find Charlotte. That wasn't a problem; she was in the company of the kids, half a block away, giving each kid two six-packs of plastic water bottles to ferry out to the various work sites.
"You've been lying there since I woke up, eyes half-open, staring off into space."
I blinked hard, then rubbed my eyes. "Hey."
"Hey."
I looked at Brian. He was pulling himself up to a sitting position, the covers over his lap. I glanced over his upper body. None of the battle wounds I'd seen him sustain in the past were there anymore. The scars from the shallow cuts Cricket had carved into his chest were gone, as were the defensive wounds and old scars on his hands and arms. He was in perfect shape, physically.
Physically.

Classical Taylor. She just woke up after a pretty busy night, and the first thing she's doing is to use her bugs to check her territory. Of course she's NOT thinking at the handsome man that she just made love with, but at Coil and Dinah and Noelle and Sierra and her people- on short, everyone else who have no connection with her love story. Poor Brian, he wants to have her attention concentrated on him rather than anyone else, but he wasn't born under a lucky start, looks like. Well, man, she's your girlfriend now, you love her and you have to accept her with all her good and bad traits. Even with her not so harmless obsessions. Yes, Taylor, I agree that Brian's is in a perfect condition PHYSICALLY, but MENTALLY.....he's not healed yet and I doubt that he'll ever be healed completely. And you're not helping him at all, being too busy putting yourself in danger and thus traumatizing him even more.

A little support for your troubled boyfriend, Taylor? You know, for a relationship to work properly, partners should think at each other and help each other, as best as their can. If you're worried for everyone else but Brian, then how you can expect for this relationship to work? Take Dragon and Defiant's example: they obviously CARE for each other and support each other, in the limits of their possibilities.

But I'd sort of explored enough to discover that last night. It hadn't been a perfect night, not even excellent, but it had been nice. Considering all of the other humiliating or awkward possibilities, I was happy to take nice. Thinking about it made me self conscious. I pulled the sheets up to my collarbone. "You sleep any?"

"Some. Woke up in the middle of the night, I made some noise. I'm surprised I didn't wake you."
I frowned. "You should have."
He shook his head. "You were exhausted. Once I saw you there, it helped me to realize where I was, dismiss them for the dreams they were. Took me a bit to relax, but it wasn't bad. Being here."
Hated that, that he was struggling like that and I couldn't help fix it.
"Do you need to talk to someone? A psychiatrist?"
I could see him flinch at that, his entire upper body stiffening in some kind of knee jerk resistance.
I waited, not pushing.
He sighed, and I watched that battle-readiness slowly seep from him, the tension leaving him. Up to a point. "Don't we all?"
"Probably. But you're the one I'm worried about."
"I'll figure this out myself. Have to do this myself, or I feel like it won't count, it won't really be a fix."
I didn't like that response, but it was a hard one to argue with.

Brian doesn't want to be helped by a psychiatrist because he's too proud to accept help from a specialist. He thinks that he can help himself overcome his trauma. I admire you for trusting in your own strength, Brian, but you have to let people help you because there are some things that you can't deal with by yourself. You have a huge ego, but its not necessary all the time, you know. Taylor needs some medical help too, Brian is not the only one with problems here, after all. I wonder if Taylor will agree to go to therapy if Brian (or someone else) will ever suggest.

"I won't pester you about it. But can you at least tell me that if this goes on for any length of time, you'll go get help?"

"It'll get better. Has to. I feel like I've taken strides forward, forcing myself to let down my guard, to be here with you."
I tensed, "Forcing yourself?"
"That's not what I mean. I mean, you know. I… I can't relax. Can't stay still, can't stop watching over my shoulder or make my brain stop replaying scenes in my head. Except I can, if I'm active, if I'm doing something like we were against those Dragon suits, or if I'm with you, and I'm lying here in your bed, trying not to wake you up. Then I know I can't get worked up, it gives me these boundaries I can force myself to work inside."
My eyebrows drew together in concern. "It sounds like it's causing you more stress in the long run."
"No," he said. He reached out and used both of his hands to seize mine. He squeezed. "Come on, no. Is that really what you want to talk about right now?"
"I'd love to talk about other stuff," I said. I wasn't sure I was telling the truth. Things were more awkward in the light of day. Only seconds ago, I had prodded a sore spot for him by raising the idea of psychiatric help. Offended him. If I didn't clear my head and get centered, I wasn't sure I trusted my ability to avoid another misstep.

Brian, you need the patience of an angel to deal with Taylor's issues and her stubordiness. She said that you need therapy but I think that her problems surpass yours. If you want a durable relationship with her, you need to accept her, yes, as I said before, BUT you should also try to convince her to relax a little more, to forget about her infinite worries at least for five minutes and to have a long talk about you and her and make common plans for future. Talk about your lives (but not work), about your best memories, your hobbies, your passions, you know, what usually two teenagers in love are talking about. You're villains with superpowers, you're bosses over thugs, but first of all, you're teenagers trying to live a normal life- or one as normal as it can be given the situation.

So, Doctor Blackarrow, the first specialist in love issues, advice you to.......CONFESS YOUR FUCKING FEELINGS, DEAL WITH THEM AND BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE ON THE MOMENT. LIVE THE FUCKING MOMENT AND PUT THE FUCKING WORRIES AWAY, AT LEAST FOR A WHILE.
I think I'd make a pretty good therapist, eh?

"But I made plans with my dad. It's…" I paused, closing my eyes, "Nine-twenty-eight. I figure I need to shower and get dressed, which might take an hour, eat, do a quick walk around my territory in civilian clothes, then head over. I want to spend time with you, but after the intensity of the past little while, taking things slow this morning feels like a nice idea."

"How do you know the time?"
"Bugs on clock hands," I said, pointing toward my bathroom.
"Ah. You want company?"
My eyes widened a little. "In the bathroom?"
He grinned. "For breakfast. And the walk-around, if you want. I could learn stuff. We're liable to lose track of time if we share a shower."
"Yeah," I said. "Please, we'll have breakfast, walk."
I climbed out of bed, tugging one of the sheets free of the bed so I had something to wrap around myself as I made my way to the bathroom.
With my bugs, I could sense Brian getting out of bed shortly after I'd abandoned the sheet, climbed into the shower and pulled the makeshift shower curtain into position. He made his way downstairs and began putting breakfast together. He set two plates down, and then said something to the empty room.
I still had the scene in mind a little while later, as I ventured downstairs. I was dressed now, a tank top, jeans and sweatshirt around my waist, my hair towel dried but still damp. "Were you talking to me?"
"I was saying it probably isn't very hygienic to have houseflies landing on dinner plates."
Ok, so he wasn't going crazy.
"They landed on the edge, and they're mine. From the terrariums upstairs. They're in as sterile an environment as you'll get."
"Okay. Just saying."
"I can't hear you through my bugs, by the way. It's not the first time you've done that."
"Right. Wasn't sure, because Tattletale said you were working on it."
I shook my head, "No progress."
"And I'm getting used to talking to empty rooms. Sometimes catch Aisha off guard. Breakfast? Sit down, I'll put the kettle on. Didn't want to fill it while you were in the shower."
"Thank you."
Through some unspoken agreement, we didn't talk about 'work'. We didn't discuss Coil, Dinah, the Travelers, Dragon or the Nine. Instead, our discussions turned to favorite movies and shows, my favorite books and memories from our childhoods. Shows we'd watched and nearly forgotten, moments from school.
Emma came up a lot, as I thought back on it. My parents too. The three of them had been the focus of my world, with everything else taking a distant second place. Emma had turned on me, my mom had left me, and my dad… I had to admit I'd left him.
I didn't raise any of the heavier stuff, but I mentioned that Emma had turned out to be one of the bullies that plagued me throughout my stay in high school.
Brian, in turn, talked about his life growing up. That did touch on the heavier stuff, and as much as I liked learning a bit more about the details of his life, I was glad when we detoured into a discussion of martial arts. As he explained it, he was more interested in the broader strokes and philosophy of a given style than on the particulars. Once he had a sense of how a given adherent of the style might approach a fight and enough basic techniques to see how they put it into practice, he tended to lose interest.
All around us, I could see people hard at work. My people were deferring to any legitimate construction crew that set to work, shifting their focus to nearby areas. I could see people moving supplies out of a nearby building so the crews could bulldoze it, others helping to unload a truck of building supplies. When I got back to this and started to give orders, I'd have to find work for them that wouldn't put them in the way. I couldn't quite track how many people were working for me in my territory, but it was far more than before.
I felt like I should be losing people each time I got pulled into a fight against a major threat. I had, when Mannequin and Burnscar had attacked, but I'd walked away from the first Mannequin fight with something of a following, and I'd expected to see my people leaving in droves after Dragon made her move. Except it wasn't happening, and I wasn't entirely sure why.

I think its cute how shy Taylor can be around Brian, right after she did THAT with him. She can't help but cover herself, she's either ashamed of her body or she's ashamed of the whole situation. Can't blame her, this was her first time and a new experience for her and needs some time to get used with the sudden changes in her life. She'll get more bold with time. Now I remember that she didn't get to see Brian's entirely naked because he used his power and now he covers himself with sheets. Not fair.

I'm glad that they discussed about hobbies and memories, just like I suggested. Its like they heard me.
GRATITUDE- definition for Taylor: "the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness." This is the reason why people decided to remain in your territory and not leave you. GRATITUDE. They're GRATEFUL to you, because you gave them a house, jobs, food, medication, protection, you treated them with decency, much better than they expected to be treated by a villain boss. Now, do you understand why they're so loyal to you?

Our walk took us on a circuit, with us turning back to my lair, and I left to go back to my dad's while Brian headed back to my place to use the shower.

I felt weird about that. Parting ways so casually after spending the night together. Oddly enough, I felt weird about letting him in my lair while I wasn't there. He'd be passing through my room, seeing my stuff. I knew it was paradoxical to be bashful, covering myself with a sheet and feeling guarded about my privacy, all things considered, but that didn't change the fact that I felt that way. I wouldn't refuse to let him use my bathroom because of it, but yeah.
In a way, we'd sort of done everything backward. We'd started with the long-running partnership. With the 'family', if I wanted to think about managing the others in that sense. In the course of that, we'd been through hell and back, we'd backed each other up, helped each other. All hurdles one might face in a marriage. Then there were the more recent cases of actually talking about the relationship happening, there was last night, then the more casual date and getting to know each other better this morning. If it wasn't a hundred percent backwards, it was at least pretty jumbled up.
Or maybe I was looking at it in an immature way, expecting some simplistic, formulaic, storybook notion of how a relationship was supposed to proceed.
I made my way to my dad's, thinking about a thousand things at once, not wanting to think about anything in particular.
There were cars parked out front. There was a strange car in the garage with the door open, two others in the driveway, my dad's at the end. With a few stray houseflies, I casually noted a dozen people inside the house. My dad was there, too.

ITS A TRAP! Its a fucking trap, Taylor. Inside your father's house, there are Coil's mercenaries, I'm convinced. Coil sent his mercenaries to either keep Danny hostage so he'll "convince" Taylor in this way to give up at the idea of taking Dinah back to her family, or to kill him, giving Taylor a painful lesson for bothering Coil with the request of releasing his prisoner. He wants to make her miserable, scared and destroy her mentally and emotionally by taking away what she loved the most: her father. Taylor should not do anything but return back to her territory, call all other Undersiders and make plans how to save her father without putting his life in danger, because if she acts alone, Danny's fate might be sealed. I'm dreading to read further.

I immediately thought of Coil. Had he divined what I had planned today? Planned some counterattack?

I'd foregone my costume, so I wouldn't feel compelled to use it in a pinch, and I'd removed my knife holster from the costume and had it clipped to the back of my waistband, so it was in the midst of the folds, blanketed by various wasps and spiders. The setup might have been awkward for anyone else, but spending the past few weeks and months while using my bugs to help guide my hand left me fairly confident that I could slip my hand through the folds and draw it at a moment's notice if I had to.
Then a man opened the door. I let myself relax.
"No shit," he said. "Taylor?"
"Hi, Kurt," I greeted my dad's coworker and longtime friend.
"Been a long time. Barely recognize you, kid."
I shrugged. "How're you doing?"
He cracked a wide grin. "Working. Getting by. Better than we were doing. Now, you coming inside or are you going to stand in the driveway for the next five minutes?"
I followed him into the house.
My dad was in the living room, surrounded by familiar faces. People I'd seen around when I'd gone to his workplace or when they'd dropped by the house. I could only put a name to the people who my dad called friends: Kurt, Kurt's wife Lacey, and Alexander. Even Lacey was burlier than my dad, with a build like Rachel's, muscle added onto that. The other three were familiar, but I didn't know them well. My dad and myself excepted, every person in the house had spent their lives doing manual labor. Just looking at him, he looked like the odd one out in every way, in clothes and body type and demeanor, but he was relaxed in a way I hadn't seen in years, surrounded by friends with a beer in hand.
My dad saw me, mouthed the word 'sorry'.
Kurt saw it. "Don't blame your old man. Alexander brought a truckload of beer in from out of town, we got to drinking. We thought we'd include Danny, drag him along, invited ourselves. Didn't know he had plans."
"It's fine," I said. Nobody that could be a threat, none of Coil's people. I let myself relax. What had I been thinking? That he'd strongarm my dad?
"Heya Taylor," Lacey said. "Haven't seen you since the funeral."
Nearly two years after the fact, it still hit me like a punch in the gut.
"Hell, Lacey," Kurt said. "Give the girl a second to get used to having people in her house before you drop that on her."
I glanced at my dad, elbows on his knees, a 24 ounce beer clasped in both hands. He'd lowered his head to stare at the can. He didn't look devastated, or even unhappy. It hadn't caught him off guard like it had hit me. Knowing these guys, I could guess it came up with enough regularity that he was used to it.
"Ah, baby," Lacey said. She raised a beer in my direction. "Just a little drunk. Wanted to say, your mom was good peoples. She hasn't been forgotten. Sorry if that came out a little direct."
"S'okay," I replied. I shifted my feet restlessly. I'd never felt more a stranger in my own house. Didn't know where to go, where I wouldn't be drawing attention, have people asking me questions. It was hard enough with my dad and I having this distance between us, but there were other people in the equation now.
Kurt spoke up, "We're leaving in a few minutes. It's hard to get around, so they're scheduling events together so we don't need to make two trips. The last debate is this afternoon, then mayoral vote right after. You catch the debate the other night?"
I shook my head. "Didn't even know it happened."
"Well, if that's any indication, this one's bound to be a pisser. So we're drinking to mellow out. And I'd feel a hell of a lot better if your dad had more than the one beer, so he can relax some and hold back from choking one of the smarmy bastards."
"Not about to do that," my dad said.
"Wish you could. But it wouldn't be worth it in the end if you wound up in jail and left that daughter of yours alone. It's all good. We'll go in stinking of beer, offer some drunken commentary from the sidelines, punctuated by a few off-color words," Kurt smiled.
"Please don't," my dad said. He hadn't raised his eyes from the beer in his hands, but he was smiling, too.
"You want to sit and let 'em say what sounds good for them?" Kurt asked.
"I was thinking it'd be better to ask the hard questions, if we get a chance. A big part of the crowd's going to be people from the north end. Good few of them are going to be from the Docks. So why don't we ask him what's happening with the ferry?"
"He's going to brush it off," Lacey said, "Not in the budget, with everything that's going on."
"Then that's a good time for some booing and drunken swearing," my dad answered, smiling.
Kurt busted out a laugh. "You want to start a riot, Danny?"
"No. But might sway the undecideds to see just how unimpressed we are with the man."
"Everyone's unimpressed with Mayor Christner," Alexander spoke up. He was a younger guy, heavily tattooed, with thick eyebrows that gave him a perpetual glower. Every time I saw him, he had his hair cut in a wild style. Today he had the left one-third of his head shaved, showing off a fresh tattoo of an old-school pinup girl in a bikini with her elbow appearing to rest on his ear.
"Disaster does that." I spoke up. "We want someone to blame, and the guy in charge makes for an easy target."
"He's a deserving target," Kurt said, seating himself on the arm of the chair Lacey was in. She wrapped one arm around his waist.
He went on, "There was this thing in Washington. Talking about whether they should throw walls up around the edge of the city, blockade the streets and shut off services, get everyone out of here."
"He said no, right?"
"He said no. Asshole. Probably earns more money this way. Take a few million for restoring and helping the city, help himself to a percentage."

My paranoia will kill me one day, I fucking swear. So, there are not Coil's men, but Danny's coworkers and friends, Kurt, his wife Lacey and Alexander. My heart is still pounding in my chest, I was scared shirtless by the whole situation, believe me. I'm scared of Coil, I'm scared of everything this absolute jerk represents. I see him capable of anything to reach his purposes or punishing the people that work for him, including for killing their loved ones, just to break them.

Heh, Danny's coworkers are blaming the poor Mayor Christner (finally, I know one of his names) because they can't leave this City of Doom anymore. They believe that he was bribed to change his mind about evacuating the City. If they'd know the real truth...Taylor would not have a good day. Neither Danny.

That surprised me. "You're not happy the city was saved from being condemned? Did you want to be kicked out of the city? To leave your home?"

"It'd suck, but the way they were talking about it in the paper, there's a big fund that's set aside for covering the damages those Endbringer motherfuckers cause. Idea was that they'd dip into those funds, give everyone that they ousted a bit to cover the cost of their homes."
"There's no way that's doable," I said. "What about everyone who left when they were told to evacuate?"
"Don't know," Kurt said. "I'm just saying what the papers did."
I felt an ugly feeling in my gut. "And they'd give us what the houses used to be worth?"
"They'd give us what the houses might be worth now," he said.
"So not much."
"It's more than they'll be worth a few years down the line, after the rot sets in and any mold problems get worse. Getting expensive to get supplies into the city, which means it'll be costly to fix things up and renovate. Not necessarily worth it."
"I saw construction crews at work."
Kurt downed a swig of his beer and cleared his throat, "Sure. The companies that are buying up all the materials, purchasing land on the cheap, all in the hopes that this city gets its act together and the land turns out to be worth something."
"It could."
"Come on," he made the words a groan, "We're under the tyranny of supervillains. Heroes don't have what it takes. Used to be they were outnumbered but they were trying, making a difference in little ways. Now they're outnumbered and losing. What's the point?"
"Just a hypothetical question," I said, "But isn't it better to be in a city that works, where villains rule the streets, instead of a failed city with the same villains in a less prominent position?"
Lacey groaned a little, "Sweetie, had a few too many to wrap my head around the question."
"Might be time to stop then, Lacey," my dad said. Turning to me, he said, "I suppose you're asking the classic question, Taylor. Would you rather be a slave in heaven or a free man in hell?"

People want to leave Brockton Bay and they're not happy to live under villains' rules, no matter how "nice" those villains are. Knowing that Coil wants the City, I absolutely agree with them, nobody in their right mind would want be ruled by such a heartless dictator (they don't know about Coil but they know that villains are taking over the City and its enough for them to be afraid for their future). Good question, Danny. I personally wouldn't want to be a slave, not even in heaven, but neither a free person in hell. I'd rather prefer to be a free individual in a normal world (not the best one, neither the worst one) just like I'm in present.

I wonder what Taylor will answer.

"Free man in hell," Kurt responded. "Fuck. You think I'd be doing what I do, living here, if I was willing to make nice, suck up to the guys in charge and do what I was told?"

Some of the others were nodding, Lacey and Alexander included.
I looked at my dad.
"What's your answer, Danny?" Kurt asked.
"I'd rather not be a slave or in hell," my dad responded. "But sometimes I worry I'm both. Maybe we don't get the choice?"
"You're the most depressing asshole of a friend I've got," Kurt said, but he said it with a smile.
"Why are you asking, Taylor?" Lacey asked.
I shrugged. How much could I say without giving them cause for suspicion? "Saw some of the stuff going on in the shelters. Some sick people, unhappy people. It was a long while before anything started getting better, and as I understand it, it was the villains who made the first move in getting things fixed up."
"For their own benefit. You can't rule a hole in the ground," Alexander said.
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe bad people can do good for the sake of doing good, at least once in a while. They're taking charge, they're keeping things more or less quiet and peaceful. It's better than what we had."
"The problem with that," my dad said, "Is that we'd be setting humanity back by about three thousand years if we let that happen. It'd be falling back into an iron age mindset and leadership. The people with the numbers and the weaponry lay claim to an area through sheer military strength. They stay in charge as long as they can through family lines, merging families with whoever else has the military strength. That lasts until the family in power peters out or someone smarter, stronger or better armed comes in to seize control. Might not sound so bad, until you figure that sooner or later, the person who gets control is going to be someone like Kaiser."

Coil is WORSE than Kaiser, I can assure you, Danny. At least, Kaiser showed a bit of humanity by sacrificing himself for the sake of his children and City. But Coil didn't showed not even a tiny drop of humanity, and I'm convinced that he doesn't even know how to be human and to love someone else except for himself. The truth is that Defiant doesn't know either, but he's a hero at heart, he wants to help/save people and to learn how to find his humanity. While Coil enjoyed messing with anyone's lives for the sake of power and unstrained villainy. The only other villains I can compare Coil with are Jack and Heartbreaker (and maybe Nilbog and Doctor Mother). But Jack is an enjoyable piece of stinking shit who probably will be more than happy to dance over the burning ruins of a completely destroyed world, Nilbog is a super-lunatic gardener, Doctor Mother BELIEVES that she have good intentions in the end despite all the super-wrong and amoral things she keeps doing, and Heartbreaker...well, Heartbreaker shares the same obsession for power with Coil so he's the closest one I can compare with Coil in terms of motivations.

Danny doesn't want to be slave neither in hell, echoing my own choice. I like the way you're thinking, Danny, you're very wise, no wonder why you're among my favorites. I swear, if Danny will die, I'm gonna RIOT. Almost anyone can die, but NOT Danny.

"Kaiser's dead," Kurt said.

"Yeah?" my dad raised an eyebrow. "Okay, but I was speaking in general terms. Could just as easily be Lung or Jack Slash, instead of the relatively benign villains that are in charge right now. Again, I stress, it's just a matter of time."
Just a matter of time until we lose -I lose- and someone else claims Brockton bay for themselves, I thought.
"What would you rather have happen?" I asked.
"Don't know," he said. "But I don't think complacency's the answer."
"Last debate," Kurt said, "People kept bringing up the capes, moderator kept shutting them down, telling them that they were supposed to be talking economy and education. Today we'll hear some talk on the crooks running the city. Hear what the candidates have to say on the subject."
"We should go soon," Lacey said. "If we want to get a seat instead of standing around at the sides."
My dad looked up at me, "Can I get you any food, Taylor? I promised you something."
"I'm alright. Had a late breakfast. Maybe when we get back?"
"I'd offer you a drink," Kurt said, chuckling, "But that'd be against the law. How old are you, anyways?"
"Fifteen," I said.
"Sixteen."
I turned to look at my dad.
"It's the nineteenth," he said. "Your birthday was a week ago."
"Oh." I'd been a little distracted at the time. A week ago, that would have been around the time we were wrapping up our confrontation with the Slaughterhouse Nine. Lovely.
"That's the saddest goddamn thing I ever heard," Kurt said, getting off the chair's armrest and helping Lacey to her feet.
"Girl missing her birthday like that. I'm guessing you don't have your license, then, huh?"
"No."
"Damn. Was hoping you'd be our designated driver so your dad could have another."
"I've only had half a tallboy," my dad said, shaking his can lightly to let us hear the contents sloshing against the sides. "And we'll be driving slow on these streets anyways. Who's driving the other car?"
Alexander raised his hand. He only had a glass of water.
"Then we're off. Out of my house," he said. I could see him wincing in pain as he used the chair's back to help himself to a standing position, but he recovered. He started shooing the burly dockworkers out the door. "Go. Into the cars."
We began to file out. Kurt and Lacey climbed into the back seat of my dad's car. The others got into Alexander's truck.
"Should you be drinking with the kidney damage?" I asked, as the doors shut. "You had trouble standing."
"I got cleared yesterday. I'm back on a regular diet. Any hurt is just the muscle and the stitches. Thanks for worrying about me."
"Of course I'm going to worry about you," I said, frowning.
"You have changed," my dad commented, resting his elbows on the roof of the car.
"Hm?"
"Wasn't so long ago that you would have walked into that situation and clammed up."
"Feels like that was a year ago."
"Anyways, I'm sorry," he said. "I'd hoped this would be just you and me, having a chance to catch up. They invited themselves."
"It's okay. I'm glad that you've got friends like that."
"They're a bit overbearing," my dad said.
"The window's open a crack," Kurt said, from inside the car. "We can hear you."
"They're overbearing," my dad repeated himself, raising his voice a notch. At a normal volume, he finished by saying, "But they're alright."
Smiling a little, I climbed into the passenger seat.
"Hey, Taylor?" Lacey asked. Her voice was overly gentle, and for a moment I thought she was going to mention my mom again. I winced a little.
"What?" I turned around in my seat, as much as I was able with my seatbelt on.
"Just wanted to say thanks. For the warning. You told your dad that Shatterbird was around, didn't you?"
I nodded.
"He told us. We were careful. I don't know if it saved our lives or not, but thanks for watching out for him, and helping us out as collater- collar-"
"You're welcome," I said, before she could fumble over her words any further.
I was glad he was in touch with them. From what I'd seen, I'd been left with worries that my dad was all on his lonesome. Introverted people like him, like us, were best paired with the Kurts of the world. Or the Lisas. People that wouldn't be ignored or shrugged off, people who pushed the boundaries, so to speak, and drew us out of our shells.
I enjoyed the drive as we made our way downtown, more than I thought I would. My dad and Kurt knew each other well enough that their dialogue flowed easily, and the same went for Lacey and Kurt, what with the pair being married. I had a feeling that, by the end, Kurt was feeling like he'd wound up on the short end of both exchanges.
The town hall had survived the waves. The stone building had crenelations and an American flag over the door. We joined the trail of people who were filing in, walking past stands with the posters and images of the candidates, booklets of brochures about the issues and stands with newspapers from neighboring cities. My dad and Kurt grabbed a few papers each and put them into the plastic bags that had been made available to us. It was a nice thought, putting those out. There wasn't any TV at present and we had to keep abreast of what was going on somehow.
The signs led us past the old historical courthouse and to the auditorium. We'd expected the seats to be filled, leaving us only with standing room, but the opposite was true. The back of the auditorium and the rear rows were filled with reporters and camera crews, and the rest of the crowd had filled in random spaces on the benches. Five or six hundred people. Somehow less than I'd thought.
It was an odd election, in a way. The city had been without working computers for a week and a half, most had lost their cell phones, and were left without landlines. An election without media for advertisement. For many here, this would be the first and last time they heard a candidate's stances on the issues before voting. Was this how it had been in the past? When poorer households hadn't gotten newspapers and there hadn't been televisions or radios?
I looked at the candidates. A dark haired woman in a dark blue suit, a blond man, and the older incumbent, Mayor Christner. How many others in this auditorium were aware? Some time ago, Coil had told us that two of the candidates for office had been bought. Mayor Christner… well, I could remember standing in his backyard, him pointing a gun at me, pleading for me to step in and save his son's life.
Would the debate turn to the subject of him arguing against the condemnation of the city, and if it did, how would Christner justify the decision he'd made?
I was caught between an ugly feeling of guilt and genuine curiosity in how the event would play out. Mostly guilt, but I couldn't do anything about that. I'd done what had to be done.
On the curiosity side of things, I wondered momentarily if either of Coil's mayoral candidates had military backgrounds or if he'd hand-picked his politicians the same way he selected his elite soldiers.

I got attached by Danny's coworkers (they're simple people but friendly, opened, honest and wise) and now I have a very bad feeling that something bad will happen to them during the mayoral debate.

Because I think the Coil will take his army and initiate attack during the debate, killing all the candidates except for HIS candidate and going so far to gun down the audience too. I know that this is not his method of doing his businesses, but he's an sadistic asshole capable of anything+ he already lost his patience and he can't wait to have his own City as fast as possible (in this way, Taylor will have no power over him anymore to demand Dinah because the City will be his and he'll do whatever he wants, without any of his people or heroes stopping him). A sudden and brutal attack SEEMS to be unlike him but at the same time is FITTING him and his lack of patience and fear that Dinah might be taken from him if he's not strong enough to prevent it from happening.

That train of thought ground to a halt as something caught my attention.

It was habit, now, to have my bugs sweeping over my surroundings, giving me a perpetual sense of what was going on in the surrounding three or four city blocks. When the vans found parking spots around the building, it didn't even warrant a conscious thought. When the soldiers began filing out of the vans, it startled me. Men and women with machine guns and body armor. Not PRT.
No. Definitely not PRT.
The armored limousine pulled into the middle of the street, just outside the front doors. By the time Coil climbed out of the vehicle, his soldiers were either just past the doors on either side of the building or standing at the ready to accompany him by the front.
Coil, here? It didn't make sense. He wasn't the type to show himself. It didn't fit how he operated. Hell, if the mayor was here, his son would be too. Triumph would be in the crowd.
I glanced at my dad, and he squeezed my hand, "Not too bored?"
I shook my head, trying to keep my expression placid as my mind raced.
Coil was making his play right here, right now.

HEROES. ROGUES. VILLAINS. MUNDANE PEOPLE. LONG AGO, EVERYONE LIVED IN RELATIVE HARMONY. THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN THE SNAKE NATION ATTACKED.
FUCKING COIL. I was so sure that he's going to do this shit. Fucking paranoiac power hungry snake of a man.
If Danny dies in the next Chapter, I'll seriously riot. :anger:

"in a small voice" I'm almost afraid to read the next Chapter, guys.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

fabledFreeboota · Sep 5, 2018

I like this chapter. The little stuff about Taylor seeing her father with his friends is really pleasant.

blackarrow · Sep 6, 2018

Hello, buddies. THIS is a Chapter that I don't want to read (but I'll still read, of course). Because I'm afraid that I'm going to assist at a MASSACRE committed by Coil's people. Danny's life MEANS A LOT to me and he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, exactly when Coil decided to thrown the whole mayoral debate into an utter and uncontrollable chaos. Because I'm convinced that there's going to be CHAOS. And gunshot. Blood. Dozens and dozens of dead people. Anyone can expect at anything when a SNAKE come into play. In general, different works of fiction (be movies, books) taught me one thing: NEVER EVER trust a character (human) with snake motifs or who belong to an organisation with snake themes or is an alien with snake features. All of the snake themed fictional characters were EVIL, LIARS, TRAITORS, CUNNING POWER HUNGRY ASSHOLE. This is a general rule: never trust the snake, never believe that someone who pretend to be (literally or metaphorically) a snake is a remotely good person. The only character who belonged to a snake themed "organisation" (Slytherin House) and who was a really good person despite all the contrary appearances, a character I liked a lot, being one of my favorite characters in Harry Potter, was Severus Snape, but he's the only example of a positive snake themed character that came into my mind

. I can't think at other positive examples. Coil is also a character that I'll never forget for the rest of my life. Because he surpassed in evilness a lot of snake themed characters. As bad as they usually are, Coil surpassed them. He's such a huge ass that he became memorable. Fuck him to not end

Monarch 16.8

There was a tap on the microphone. "If we could have silence from the audience, please?"

The low murmur of conversation throughout the auditorium gradually died down. The place wasn't full, but four out of every five seats were filled, and there were more people at the back, primarily reporters, many from out of town.
My eye darted across the room, trying to assess the situation. The heavy woman in the front row, was that Piggot? It made sense that every person worth talking about would be present. The disasters and Tattletale's attack on the cell towers meant that there wasn't TV, there weren't phones, and the only way for interested parties to find out what the candidates had to say was actually attending.
Outside of the auditorium, Coil's men gathering in the lobby and at the sides of the building. Some were taking point on the roof, gathering in pairs, working together to assemble sniper rifles. Preparing for a fight. For a war.
Coil was in the lobby, now, and he was joined by others. I could recognize Circus by the sledgehammer she was carrying, the metal head dragging on the floor. Coil said something and she lifted it up. Was he talking about the noise? It shouldn't matter. He was accompanied by two others I didn't recognize. A teenage guy and a larger, more athletic man in a heavy metal frame.
"Thank you to everyone for coming. Tonight is a three-way debate. Let me introduce your candidates, starting with Mr. Roy Christner, our mayor incumbent. We also have Mrs. Carlene Padillo, city councilor of communications; and Mr. Keith Grove, C.E.O. of Eaststar Financial. Tonight's subjects are crime, public safety and the state of the city. Would you start us off, Mayor Christner? What sets you apart from the other candidates in your views?"
I glanced over my shoulder to verify what I was seeing with my bugs. A young man was making his way up the aisle with a toddler, straight for Coil.
"I won't lie," Christner said. I glanced his way, saw how haggard he looked. In a way it worked for him, made him look determined. "Things are bad. The situation's improved from where it was weeks ago, but we're still in an ugly situation. No less than forty percent of the city has evacuated, hospitals are overflowing, and villains claim to own the streets…"
I looked back to the dad and his kid. They opened the door, stepping through, and two of Coil's soldiers were on them before they could open their mouths and shout a warning. Putting hands over mouths, the soldiers retreated from the door, separating dad from child. Within seconds, both were being gagged and restrained.
The door closed on its own, leaving nobody any wiser to what was going on.

I won't be surprised if Coil's soldiers will kill the poor random dad and his child in the next seconds.

Because this is one of Coil's hobbies, besides manipulating and taking the power for himself. Torture and kill people, you know, he shares the same hobby with Jack. They'd have made such a good team in different circumstances.

Ah, and I forgot another one, kidnapping and drugging children. Mayor Christen, you're a good and compassionate politician, you have all my respect and I definitely agree with you (you have to be by Coil's side, you can't do nothing to oppose him), but your situation still looks very, very bad. Disastrous. Coil and his army, including Circus and two other parahumans, are there and they're probably going to murder the good mayor (once they don't need him anymore) and the other candidate that is not Coil's puppet.

"…involved with the defense every step along the way. I've discussed the subject with Legend, with Dragon and with Chief Director Costa-Brown of the PRT. Daily, I've been talking with and working with Director Piggot to see what actions need to be taken to see this city restored to what it once was."

"That's setting the bar pretty damn low," Grove said, gripping the sides of his podium.
"No interruptions, please," the moderator spoke. Christner waved her off. "You concede the remainder of your turn, Mayor?"
"Let's hear what Grove has to say."
"Very well. Mr. Grove. Two minutes to speak."
"He wants to restore the city to what it was? I think he's wanting us to forget that half of our city was a cesspool before the Endbringer came. Many of you in the audience live in the north end. You know how bad it was. Or maybe the Mayor is referring to the city's heyday, when the docks were bustling with activity and the entire city could hear the ships coming in and out of the ports. If he's trying to convince you we'll return to that time, he's telling you an outright falsehood. The Lord's Port, known to many as the ship graveyard, would cost the city twenty-three million dollars just to clear away the damaged ships and dispose of them. That's not getting into the cost of actually refurbishing the area and updating it to modern standards. Or the fact that anyone approaching within a mile and a half of the area is subjected to uncontrollable, suicidal despair. I visited. I know."
I sent a message to Coil, drawing words with my bugs.
'I'm here. Stop.'
He broke up the words with a casual wave of his hands, scattering the bugs. Almost dismissive. Of course he wouldn't stop now. He'd made little secret about how important his plans were to him, and to stop now, at a moment this important?
"The mayor wants to take us back to where we were? That's not good enough. I'm proposing that we make this an opportunity. The slate, in many ways, has been wiped clean. Let's start over again. There's national and international funding that's been put in place to help recover from Endbringer attacks and events of gross parahuman involvement. My budget, which is detailed in handouts that will be provided in the lobby, details how we'll use our tax dollars and that recovery funding to rejuvenate the city. The ferry, which has become a local in-joke, will be started up once more. Low-cost, high-yield housing plans for the north end, demolition and reconstruction on a large scale for Downtown and other damaged areas, and marketing to the rest of the United States to promote and sell Brockton Bay as a symbol of perseverance and human spirit, drawing in new residents and tourism."
"Councillor Padillo," the moderator spoke. "Any response?"
"Keith Grove is not addressing the question. He paints a pretty picture, but he doesn't mention the presence of the local supervillains or the pressures they put on us…"
I fidgeted. Could I attack? Should I attack? If I left now, maybe stepped into the side hallway, I could maybe avoid the soldiers, get to a vantage point where I could mount a counterattack against Coil.

NO, Taylor, you can't attack. You're unmasked, people can identify you, your father is next to you and he can serve as a target for Coil once he'll notice your attack, you can't fight by yourself against Coil's army of mercenaries+ his 3 parahumans (because, let's not forget Coil's OP power- if Taylor will dare to make a move, he can simply slip timelines and Taylor' attack will fail because he'll let the timeline where the attack never happened (or failed) to exist). As much as I hate Coil, I have to admit that he's incredible smart and resourceful (he still needs to have some qualities, as few as they're, not only flaws over flaws, right?

). An attack...RIGHT NOW? One of the worst decisions Taylor will ever take.

Except I didn't know what he was planning, and my dad was here. I could take my dad, but then I risked having to explain what was happening, and it would mean leaving Kurt, Alexander and Lacey behind. It meant leaving all these other civilians behind.

It wasn't practical to bring anyone else along, but I couldn't bring myself to run from my dad, here. I couldn't say why, how or any of that, but I felt as though leaving my dad behind here would mean I could never come back. That it would break our relationship, whether it was me getting outed as a supervillain, a break in whatever tenuous bond of trust we had or because one of us would die.
I tended to be more rational than emotional. If I was being totally honest with myself, though, my rationalizations were pretty heavily influenced by my feelings. I could come up with a rational justification for pretty much any course of action. It had led me this far. Which wasn't necessarily a good thing.
Councilor Padillo was still talking, even as my mind raced. "…Points to a mismanagement of resources. The Mayor would like us to believe that he was involved in genuine efforts to save this city. I can't believe he would want to be associated with the PRT's operations as of late. Loss after loss on the part of our heroes. The losses aren't the fault of the heroes, it's even understandable, given the sheer power wielded by the likes of the Endbringer, of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the various other threats within the city…"
Coil was moving, now, his people getting in rank and file around him, his pet parahumans standing by.
I had to make my call. Stand up to him and jeopardize everything I'd been working towards? Here, now, with Coil drawing on his power, with three parahumans and no less than twenty elite soldiers who I knew were entirely capable of hitting what they were aiming at, backing him up? Even if I stayed hidden in the crowd, I couldn't say for sure that he wouldn't spot me or my dad and order one of his people to move.
The alternative was that I could do as I'd been ordered, avoiding any costumed activity; trust Coil and his power to handle the situation. I hated him, on a level, but I knew he was smart. And I knew he knew I was here; I'd asked Lisa and she'd asked him if it was okay. He had to have a plan for dealing with me if I took any action.
"…Open fighting in the streets. No, the blame lies with the PRT and the mayor's administration, which he admits was heavily involved in the decisions made. Highly questionable decisions: Holding back when they could have intervened. Forcing confrontations when our heroes were gravely outmatched."
I saw Piggot shifting uncomfortably in her seat at that. Had this been arranged? A staged scene?

I think I found Coil's Dummy. Councilor Padillo. She's Coil's favorite candidate. Look, she supports the salvation of the City, she blames everything on Mayor Christner and Emily Piggot, saying that the City became like this because of their bad administration. Bullshit. Yes, Emily did some mistakes, but she also did some pretty good things too. She never held back against S9 or even Undersiders, she tried to arrest Undersiders and the failure wasn't her fault (after all, nobody can't challenge Tattletale to a game of wits and expect to win

). Mayor Christner wanted to evacuate the City and offer people compensation and a better life in another city (until he was threatened and assaulted in his own house). They're overall decent people who acted with decency and care towards the citizens. Padillo is Coil's man...I mean woman, and she had to blame the people that her boss wants to be blamed.

Coil started striding for the closed double doors that led to the back of the auditorium, flanked by Circus and the other parahuman, rank after rank of his soldiers following.

I gripped my dad's hand, held it tight, and stayed where I was.
The doors banged open. Coil, Circus and… Über was with him, in a heavy metal suit, Leet stood off to one side, holding what looked like a ray gun. People screamed, and it set off a chain reaction of responses throughout the auditorium. People started running for the other exits, only to have their paths barred as more soldiers emerged.
My dad and I stayed in our seats, and I crouched low in front of my seat, pulling my dad down so he would be under cover.

Fuck!?! Uber and Leet are the two other parahumans working for Coil? Coil recruited the most STUPID PARAHUMANS in the entire story? WHAT?????!!!

lol My God, Coil, what was in your mind to recruit these two? Nothing, nothing at all. Bakuda did the same thing and they're the first ones of her mooks to be defeated by Undersiders, back when Undersiders weren't so experienced in fight like they're in present. If Coil's plans will fail, I'm sure that one of these two dumbasses will be at fault. At least Circus is good at fighting (I know that Circus is genderfluid and I'm going to refer at them using "she" because in this Chapter they're obviously a woman. When they'll be a man, I'll use "he" of course) and maybe she can help Coil to not be embarrassed too much. But he still have his mercenaries so I should be worried instead of making fun of his poor recruitment skills. Especially since Danny is there.

"What the hell?" the Mayor growled into his microphone. "Coil?"

"Mister Mayor," Coil spoke.
"This is insanity," Grove spoke.
"Genius sometimes looks that way to those who don't see the whole picture." Coil had advanced far enough down the aisle that I could see him clearly. He turned to take in the crowd, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought he'd stop when his eyes fell on me. His head kept moving, and he walked further down the aisle, closer to the stage.
Grove said, "The local heroes-"
"Are occupied. Fires started at select locations, areas where the damage won't be immediate, but where they cannot be allowed to spread. One such fire is at your headquarters. My apologies. I wanted to target high-priority areas. The other fires will occupy the members of the Undersiders and Travelers and slow them down as they recover from the loss of their individual headquarters."
I tensed at that. How much of it was a bluff?
"You bastard," the Mayor growled. "First my niece, now this?"
Niece?
Of course. I'd heard Dinah was niece to one of the mayoral candidates. I hadn't realized she was the niece to the mayor.
"She's safe and sound," Coil said. "As are any people here without a title. If you're the mayor, or a candidate for mayor, if you call yourself chief of police, lieutenant, director or major, I'm afraid I can't promise your safety."
"What are you going to do?"
"Let me demonstrate. Circus?"
Circus was walking through the assembled crowd as though she were on solid ground, but each footstep was onto the back of one of the auditorium seats. She extended her arms out to either side, fingers splayed, then closed her hands into fists. Knives stuck out from the spaces between each finger.
Mr. Grove and Mrs. Padillo ran first, and Mayor Christner was only steps behind. It didn't matter. Circus flung her arms forward and each of the eight knives hit the mark.
People stood from their seats and for long moments I couldn't see what happened on the stage after that. I only felt the bodies hit the floor with the bugs. I didn't dare move the bugs to try to see exactly where the knives had landed.
Coil's soldiers were holding the reporters and cameramen at gunpoint. I raised myself up high enough to see him turning around to face the largest group of cameras. "The other villains want to seize the city from below. To start at the streets, out of sight, to remove any who would threaten their rule, and claim the various districts one by one. They ignore the fact that there are others in power who aren't superhuman. Ordinary mortals with the power to make decisions that affect its citizens.
"I would take the more direct route. Brockton Bay is mine. I will make the decisions, claim and distribute the taxes and decide who sits in seats of power. Anyone who would disagree will face the same fate as the mayor, Mr. Grove and Mrs. Padillo."
I rose up enough to get a glimpse of the stage. The mayor was lying on his back, chest rising and falling with too much force, as if he was sucking in lungfuls of air and then forcing them out with just as much strength. He had a knife sticking out of the middle of his torso, another in his shoulder, and yet another in his leg. My father pulled me down before I could see the others.

This Chapter never cease to SURPRISE me. Padillo isn't Coil's Secret Candidate. Otherwise he wouldn't have ordered Circus to badly injure/kill her. Grove is not a Dummy either. So, who's Coil's man (or woman)? Ok, now I understand, he doesn't need a puppet mayor, he already admitted that he'll be the one who'll rule the City. He'll be the Mayor, the Governor, the Sheriff, the Kingpin, everyfucking thing. On short, a Dictator. And he's not afraid to admit it.

Neither afraid to SHOW it by killing the current Mayor and the other two candidates. See, Taylor? This is the man you trust with Dinah. This is the man who promised you that he'll take over the City through peaceful means. Just look at those "peaceful means" he was talking about.

Killing people left and right and threatening to kill everyone who'll opposite him. Do you still TRUST HIM...TAYLOR? Poor Mayor. I didn't expected either for Dinah to be his niece. I knew that she is the nice of one of mayoral candidates, but never expected at Mayor Christner. This guy's life is a nightmare with open eyes. His nice was kidnapped and drugged, his son tortured in front of him and now he probably is dying. The suckiest life and fate a non-powered character ever had in this story so far.

The mayor wasn't dead, but he looked like the man might be dying. Was I condoning this by staying silent? I'd told myself I would let Coil's plan play out until he did something unconscionable and this threatened to cross the line. It was only the fact that the mayor was still alive and the fact that I couldn't think of what I might do to intervene that kept me on the sidelines, hiding from the soldiers and the assault rifles they were wielding.

"You cannot expect this to succeed," the voice blared over the speakers.
"Director Piggot," Coil spoke. "I must admire your courage, putting yourself in the line of fire so soon after your last escapade. Kidnapped by the Undersiders, weren't you?"
Through my bugs, I could sense how Piggot was leaning heavily on a desk just in front of the stage, using the debate moderator's microphone. "This plan of yours was doomed from the outset. Just for what you've done, threatening these people and ordering the execution of those three on the stage, they'll send the entire Protectorate after you. America will demand it. Or are you so mad you think we'll let you crown yourself king?"
"Mad? No. A monster? Maybe. Better to say I'm a freak of nature. My power is to control my own destiny, to reshape and cultivate it. What you see here is only the tip of the iceberg."

I have to agree with Coil here for the first timer in this Chapter. He openly admitted what he truly is: an irredeemable monster. And he seems to be proud of himself. So far, two veritable monsters were honest enough with themselves to admit their monstrosity: first Jack, now Coil. Congratulations for this moment of sincerity, Coil. Emily is so freaking badass that she DARES to speak against Coil ever after she saw people being injured/killed by his henchwoman. In the same manner the Mayor is the unluckiest normal human, Emily is the most BADASS NORMAL HUMAN.

Too bad that her badassery might cost her life in the next moment.

"There's a greater plan, then."

"Quite. A shame you won't discover it. Circus?"
Piggot backed away from the table and ducked low. It didn't help. Circus lobbed a throwing knife into the air, so that it arced. She didn't have eyes on the director, but the knife nonetheless went high, catching the light as it reached the peak of its flight near the high ceiling of the auditorium. It plunged down to strike its target and screams sounded from the front of the auditorium.
"Someone contacted the heroes," Leet spoke. "My U.I. says they're on the way."
"Good," Coil responded. "Circus, come. Squad captains, maintain order here. We'll be back the moment this is done."
"The bitch is too fat. Thinking I didn't hit anything vital," Circus said.
"See it through," Coil ordered, turning to leave with Über and Leet accompanying him. Circus turned to follow, flicking her wrist hard over her shoulder. Three knives traveled through the air, their paths eerily in sync as they nearly touched the ceiling, converging together as they dropped towards Piggot.
I barely had time to think about it, rising to my feet and calling on my bugs. I knew it was too few, too late, but standing by while someone got murdered? Four or five cockroaches, some houseflies, it wasn't enough. I'd held the bugs back, keeping them in out of the way areas, and now I didn't have enough to block the knives or divert them from their path.
There was a flash of light around Piggot, and for just an instant, I thought maybe she had powers. Maybe she'd had a trigger event, or she always had them but kept them in reserve?
But it wasn't her. Weld caught the knives, letting them sink into his palm, down to the hilts.

WELD JUST SAVED EMILY'S LIFE. WELD IS THE BEST HERO. <3 <3 Weld, I don't care how you look and I don't give a flying shit about your physical "disabilities", you're perfect for me anyway so...do you want to be my husband?

Man, I love Weld to death, I'd be instantly his friend if he was real. Come on, Weld and...the other heroes, I suppose he's not the only hero there, kill/arrest that Circus bitch who tried to assassinate Emily and destroy Coil's day; even if he'll escape, at least the City won't be his. Please, God Wildbow, let Danny be safe, let Danny be safe....

It was the Wards. Weld and Vista were at the foot of the room. Vista was raising her hands, folding the walls into barriers to block those of Coil's soldiers who weren't holding the reporters hostage. Kid Win was at one corner of the room, firing what looked like concussion blasts into soldier and civilian alike, a gun in each hand, and the hovering turrets at his shoulder adding still more firepower to the fray. He'd taken the fight out of them with the first barrage, and the follow-up fire was apparently to take down the soldiers who managed to climb to their feet or raise a weapon. The concussion-cannons were obvious nonlethal weapons from the casual way he was firing into the massed people, intended to stun and disable rather than harm.

Chariot had a gun that was firing off charges of electricity, similar to the one I'd borrowed from Kid Win, and was flying over the assembled soldiers, unloading shots on them. His costume was different from the last time I'd seen him, with single-wheeled roller blades at his toes and a flight system that didn't seem to be attached to him. A disc the size of a car tire floated behind his head and shoulders, almost luminescent with energy, and the wings of his flight suit, tipped with jets of gold light, floated out to either side of it.
Clockblocker formed the final part of the strike party. He wasn't fighting- not directly. He stood by a white cloth that had been frozen in time, covering the soldiers.
They were turning the situation around. The suddenness with which they'd appeared, their positioning, they had planned this, assessing the situation, deciding where they needed to be to make a decisive strike and protect the crowd, and they must have teleported in. I knew they had the technology to teleport objects. I hadn't guessed they had it for people, too.
"This way!" Weld bellowed. "Evacuate through the area at the back of the stage! Stick to the sides! And I need medical help for the wounded!"
Their group was a little battered, beaten and bruised, and they wore replacement costume parts. Where I could see skin, I noted the welts of bug bites and stings that hadn't yet faded. Vista had covered hers with makeup, but they were there.
I was frozen by indecision. I felt almost hopeful, strange as that sounded. If the good guys got the upper hand, if they actually beat Coil, then I could rescue Dinah by simply visiting Coil's base and opening the door to her room. Coil was being ruthless here.
At his orders, four people had been wounded to the point that they might die. If I stepped in to help…

Don't help, Taylor, stay away, take your father and leave the scene. If you were alone then I wouldn't have any objection for you to help the heroes. But your father is with you and any attempt to stop Coil might put his life in danger. Think at your father, Taylor, girl, think at your only parent left alive. Gosh, this Chapter keeps me on the edge, I don't think the heroes will win this time because I was thinking more deeply at Coil's plans and I reached a conclusion: the damned snake WANTED for the heroes to show up, planning to defeat them so he can prove to the entire City that heroes can't protect it anymore, being too poorly organized to win against villains. Only Coil is capable enough to defend Brockton Bay against its enemies. This is what this asshole of a snake is planning, right?

Now let's watch Chariot making a move to help Coil because...he's Coil's mole, after all.

No, my help wouldn't be welcome. It could even be dangerous, a distraction at a crucial time. I would also have to escape. A resounding victory might see them locking down the area to take down witness statements or make sure no soldiers removed their uniform and slipped out with the crowd. Nobody had seen me gathering the bugs in my futile attempt to try to help Piggot. But if they found out Skitter was in the building and won, then it would be a question of narrowing down which teenage girl in the building fit the profile.

And if I tried to help and Coil won, well, my dad and I would be fucked. No sense in putting it politely. He would be in a prime position to not only retaliate, but maybe even retaliate without losing the support of my teammates.
If anything anchored me in place, it was the way one of Dad's hands clutched my own, the other hand holding my wrist, and the way he seemed to be trying to shield me with his body. His face was taut with fear, his body rigid.
"Wards!" Weld shouted. "All clear!?"
"Clear!" the cry came back three times, from Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot. The soldiers had been taken down.
My dad tugged on my hand. Enough people had made their way down the aisles that we had room to maneuver. I followed his lead, letting him pull me towards the aisle.
"Regroup! Optimal range, facing the doors!" Weld ordered. Vista, Clockblocker, Kid Win and Chariot hurried to the center of the room. He stayed where he was, watching as civilians from the crowd tended to the wounded. All but the mayor were apparently alive. The only one I could wonder about was the mayor. He was lying prone, receiving CPR at the hands of two people.
"Now!" Weld shouted.
Clockblocker moved, lunging three feet to his left to tag Chariot. Chariot froze in the air.
I stopped in my tracks, momentarily confused. Had some of the Wards turned traitor? No. Kid Win and Vista seemed to be taking this in stride. Both were working together to bind Chariot.
There were cries of protest from the crowd. "What are you doing?" "He didn't do anything!"
"He's a double agent," Weld spoke, his voice carrying. "Working for Coil. Go. Evacuate, get out of here. We have this in hand."
He radiated confidence. Damn it, for all the times we'd fought the Wards, for every time I'd cursed the heroes for not doing what I needed them to do, I began to feel hopeful.
My dad and I were making our way down the aisle, past the soldiers that Chariot had laid low. We were at the steps leading up to the stage when the doors slammed open.
Über led the way, followed by Coil, Leet, Circus and a squadron of soldiers. His metal frame took the brunt of the incoming fire, and he used his arms to shield his exposed upper body from the blasts of electricity and the concussion shots from Kid Win's guns and turrets.
Vista began shrinking the arms, but the progress seemed slower. She had trouble using her power when there was living material in the way, but it was still working.
Being so close to the fighting, to the gunfire and flashes of electricity, people were reacting badly. Screaming, shouting at others to move faster, pushing and shoving. Worst of all, they were making so much noise I couldn't follow everything that was going on.
Coil was saying something, his words carrying to the heroes, but I missed it in the chaos.
I didn't want to out myself as being present, so I was limited in how many bugs I could deploy. A small handful on Coil served to let me follow his movements. He'd dropped to one knee behind Über, and Leet handed him a small remote control. He wasted no time in pressing the button.
The noise of gunfire changed. My head wasn't the only one that turned to see what had happened.
Kid Win had stopped shooting, and a shrill whine was filling the air. He turned to Weld, who began tearing at his armor.
Leet stepped out from behind Über and shot Vista. She was thrown down the length of the aisle, slamming against the base of the stage. He took another shot at Clockblocker, who froze himself. Kid Win drew another gun from a side holster and shot Leet.
Weld had finished dismantling Kid Win's armor, freeing what looked to be a power cell.
I could barely make out the words, but someone in the crowd did. A woman screamed the words, "He said it's a bomb! Sabotage! Run!"
In that instant, the crowd became a crush of bodies, each trying so hard to get up and through the stairwell that we barely made any progress. Über, Leet, Circus and Coil began running towards the lobby, Über kicking down the door, leaving the heroes to deal with the bomb they were holding, which was squealing at a higher pitch and volume with every passing second. It was glowing, brilliant in its golden radiance.
Kid Win pointed at Chariot. The boy was frozen, still, but the wings and pack on his back were still active, not attached to Chariot's suit and therefore unaffected by Clockblocker's power.
Weld caught the setup out of the air, tearing away the outer casing the second it was in his hands. Kid Win changed the wiring. They were shouting something to one another, but I couldn't make out the words. Weld pointed up.
The bomb or sabotaged power supply disappeared, teleporting away in the same grid of lines that I'd seen Kid Win use to summon his massive cannon. It dawned on me what they'd done. Teleporting the bomb straight up into the sky, where there was nobody and nothing to be affected.
Or that had been their plan. It didn't work out that way. I saw a flicker of light from the lobby, the glow of the device, and Coil wheeling around to face us, his screaming lost in the midst of the shrill whine and the shouts of the others.
My eye to brain response was too slow to process everything that happened next. I saw it in snapshots: the swelling energy of the sabotaged power supply, Coil's body coming apart in pieces, the chairs of the auditorium and fragments of floorboards being thrown into the air as the explosion seemed to move in slow motion.
Then it hit us, and I saw only white, felt only pain.

Kudos to heroes for stopping Chariot. Leet and Uber are MORE THAN SURPRISING CAPABLE of fucking up with heroes big time (I hope Vista will be ok after that shoot+ bomb explosion), maybe Coil taught them how to use their powers efficiently and made them stop clowning around (if Leet, the apparently most stupid Tinker around was able to create such a powerful bomb and a teleportation device, then don't be surprised anymore, my dear friends, when I'll say again and again how fucking dangerous, badass and cool Tinkers are in general. Even the "weakest" ones can be a force to recognize with, especially when they're evil. Kid Win seems "weak" too but only because he's not allowed to use lethal weapons. Imagine an evil Kid Win who's not holding back in using lethal weapons against his enemies. Not so "weak" anymore, eh? My dad believes that Masters are the most dangerous parahumans. I'm not going to argue with him, seeing what Nilbog, Manton, Regent and Skitter can do and imagining what Heartbreaker will do once he'll make his expected apparition in person but my opinion is that Tinkers are more dangerous, more crazy and more versatile. We accept each other's opinions so there's no problem regarding different opinions between us).

Also, NO FUCKING WAY COIL DIED IN EXPLOSION.

You can't fool me, Wildbow. That man who died wasn't Coil, but someone that Coil USED to replace him. Maybe not even a real person. Genesis' projection, right? She projected, at Coil's request, a silhouette of a man dressed in Coil's costume. And...voila.

Coil embarrassed the heroes, made the whole City distrust them, staged his death and took over the City while everyone will believe that he died. Fucking genius, this is...gosh, I HATE Coil being so fucking victorious. But maybe not for a long time. If Taylor will not be too badly injured by the bomb's explosion, she'll probably hide Danny (if he'll survive the bomb) in a safe place and go personally after Coil, trying her best to release Dinah and make him pay for everything, no matter how much she'll risk her life in the process.

I'm afraid to read the next Chapter because...I don't know who died and survived during the bomb's explosion. There are heroes that I love, there is Danny, his colleagues, Emily, the Mayor (who probably died in the meantime because of the knife wounds). So many characters I care for...

Good night and sleep well, my friends. And fuck you, Coil.

blackarrow · Sep 6, 2018

fabledFreeboota said:
I like this chapter. The little stuff about Taylor seeing her father with his friends is really pleasant.

Yes, man, the last Chapter was basically the Calm before the SNAKENADO.

AmbarGriss · Sep 6, 2018

Can't for your reaction to next two chapters

KnownParadox · Sep 6, 2018

This Summer!...

Coming to a theatre near you!...

From the creators of SHARKNADO!...

An experience of a lifetime!...

We bring to you!....

blackarrow said:
SNAKENADO

blackarrow · Sep 8, 2018

Hello, friends. Watch Blackarrow FREAKING OUT before reading this new Chapter, because there are so many characters that she cares for with uncertain fates after Coil's bomb exploded.

I'm sure that Taylor will be fine (injured but not dead) but I'm not so sure about Danny and the other characters. I have to read this Chapter, I can't skip it, its going to be HEAVY for me to read about so many possible dead heroes and dead non-powered people and...dead Danny, but I'm already used with reading heavy stuff so won't be so bad. After all, I survived Mannequin and Agnosia Miasma (the two most disturbing and scary things I had to read about in this story), I can survive to a bomb explosion too, right?

Btw, I re-read the last Chapter (I always re-read each Chapter to see if I didn't missed an important detail) and yes, I missed something. Something during the mayoral debate, about the Lord's Port. Everyone who approached within a mile and a half of it feels the uncontrollable desire to kill themselves. I can't believe I missed THIS. So....Cherish? Her power not only torments her but also the other people in her vicinity. Bonesaw, what have you done?

The deal was to punish Cherish, not people who have no connection with what Cherish did too. I think I know how Coil can be killed without having the necessary time to use his power. If he'll be convinced/forced to approach Lord's Port, he'll fucking kill himself without anyone having to lift a finger to put an end to his miserable life.

But the problem is that he KNOWS about the Suicide Port and he'll not be convinced neither forced so easy to go there. Its not going to work as easy as it appears. Let's start the new Chapter and hope for the best. As best as the things in this universe can go. I mean, maybe some people survived, eh?

Monarch 16.9

Heavy. The weight of the body on top of me was making it hard to breathe. Some backup process kicked into gear as my body tried and failed to take in air. I was thrust out of unconsciousness, or out of the semiconscious daze I'd been in. I managed to struggle to get my upper body free, fighting past the aches that made every joint and every bone hurt to heave the body off me.

It hadn't felt like sleep, or the darkness of unconsciousness, but I hadn't been thinking either. I felt a moment's disorientation and wondered if I'd suffered another concussion. My thoughts felt too lucid.
The body. My dad? I opened my eyes to look, saw only cloudy white. Dust? It was similar to when I woke up with bleary eyes, but no matter how many times I blinked, I could only see a white haze with vague patches of light and dark. Blinking made my face burn where the skin of my eyelids and around my eyes moved. More irritating was the sensation that I had something in my eyes, except no amount of blinking was helping. They'd been damaged?
Stupid to look straight at the explosion. I'd thought I had another half-second to grasp what was going on before I had to turn my head and shut my eyes. Apparently that wasn't good enough.
My dad. Right. I reached over and fumbled to find his throat. He had a pulse. I put one hand in front of his mouth and found him breathing.
I was whole, he was alive. Anything else would be hard to verify.

Taylor is ok, but she's probably blind because she stared straight at the explosion like a dumbass. Maybe the blindness will be temporary unless Wildbow wants to create a teenager female version of Daredevil with control over bugs instead of superhuman senses. I won't say no to a permanently blind Taylor, I'll feel sorry for her, yes, but it will be interesting to read a story from the perspective of a protagonist with a disability, since these protagonists are so freaking rare. I'd be curious to see if she'll develop the ability to see through her bugs' eyes and how much her power will be useful to cover/hide her disability.

Danny is ok and this is what that matters in this Chapter. Just kidding, I hope his coworkers, Emily, the Mayor and heroes are ok too.

I was forced to use my bugs to see. What their eyes processed might not translate well in my brain, but it was about as good as what I had. Didn't want to move the bugs or gather a swarm. It would be too easy to track me down, to find Skitter lying among the wounded.

No, I only looked, keeping the bugs where they were, and feeling things out where necessary with only a handful of flies. I could feel a breeze. The front of the building had a hole in it. The lobby had been annihilated, and much of it was open to the sky. The black blobs that had pulled up around the building had flickering lights on top. Sirens. They would be the first responders.
I'd noted the structural damage. I tried to picture the scene as I'd last glimpsed it. What had been where? Who had been where?
The reporters had been at the very back of the room, the last to make their way down the aisles in the press of the crowd and the people making their way out of their seats. Some had lingered, protecting their equipment or filming the scene. I tenderly moved one fly over the area, feeling the shattered boards, the blood-slick expanses of floor, the charred flesh.
Several of the Wards were working to tend to the wounded. Clockblocker had saved the Wards, apparently, but had been too late in tending to himself, and was currently lying prone, receiving some care from Weld. Chariot was gone.
There had been hundreds of people present, and too many had still been in the building when the explosion went off. The dad and son who'd been restrained in the lobby? The mayor, candidates and director who'd been wounded, then left without aid when the explosion injured the people who were giving them first aid, sent the people flying?
I couldn't even grasp the entirety of the scene, not without bringing my swarm to bear. I couldn't do that without possibly revealing my presence when I was in a vulnerable position.
I felt around to find Kurt and Lacey.
"Hey baby," Lacey said. "You woke up."
"You hurt?"
"Just a little bit. Might have slipped a disc. Probably nothing to worry about, but I'm going to stay as still as I can with how bad this hurts. I've been watching your dad, trying to tell if he's breathing or if I'm imagining it. You didn't freak out, so I take it that our Danny's okay?"
"He's okay. I think."
"Good. Kurt's unconscious but he's alright. You see Alexander anywhere?"
I blinked a few times. Did she not realize I couldn't see? "No."
"Okay, hon. You should stay as still as possible."
I shook my head. "No. Going to see if anyone needs help."
She gripped my hand, started to say something, then winced.
"What's wrong."
"Hurts, is all. Stay put? Safest thing to do."
I shook my head. I couldn't say it, but I felt like I'd been through enough crises and suffered enough that I was aware of what the pain was telling me. I was almost certain I wasn't in critical danger. It was what my gut was telling me.
With only a small few bugs to guide me, I left my dad, Kurt and Lacey behind, climbing up the stairs to the damaged stage, fumbling for the other wounded. I could only draw crude images of the situation from touch, from the blurry images my eyes offered me and through my bugs. A woman, unconscious like my dad. A man, his arms hugged to his lower stomach as he writhed in perpetual agony.
The mayor. I crawled over to him, pressing my fingers to his throat. He had a pulse, but it was thready. I drew bugs from where they hid in the midst of my hair, commanded them down my arms and tried to bend over so my hair masked what I was doing. Once they were on him, I sent them over the length of his body, noting where there was blood. No use fumbling around with my hands. I didn't want to bump one of the throwing knives and gave it the push necessary to drive it into one of his arteries. One of the knives that impaled his hip had moved, probably when the explosion happened, and the offending weapon wasn't serving to cork the blood flow.
I pulled my sweatshirt from around my waist, leaving my knife where it was on my belt, folding one sleeve and pressing it around the base of where the knife had penetrated. It wasn't enough, didn't feel like I was doing anything, but I wasn't sure what else I could do. I wasn't strong enough to do chest compressions.

Some great news. Two of Danny's coworkers are injured, but fine, all the Wards were saved by Clockblocker (thank you, Clockblocker), the Mayor is still alive, but his wounds don't look pretty.

The bad news? All the bad guys survived, including Chariot, and Coil will take over the City while everyone will blame heroes and Emily for this massacre. This is what he'll do. Watch this motherfucker showing his evil genius by eliminating the heroes and turning Brockton Bay into a City of the worst kind of villains. :rage:

Taylor is helping the Mayor mostly because she feels guilty and responsible for every misfortune that this man endured, even the actual one (probably because she helped Coil to go so far with his plans, despite not knowing what he will do- but this is what she'll tell herself). Its good what you're doing for the Mayor, Taylor, but you still need to make amends to his son, Clockblocker, Vista and TRY to convince Assault that you didn't helped on purpose S9 to kill his girlfriend (I don't think you'll have a chance with Assault anyway but others...they might forgive you in time).

"Help!" I shouted. "I need help here!"

Nobody leaped to the rescue. Anyone else that was still in the building was too busy with their own injuries, were still unconscious or were making their way outside.
Damn them.
Damn Coil. I would make him answer for this.
Yes, I had seen 'Coil' die. I had little doubt others had as well, even news cameras would have had eyes on the scene. Especially news cameras. Coil had staged this, taken advantage of the reporters' cameras, the fact that there were no working communications, and all the important figures would be attending. He was too savvy, too invested in his plan to not have taken all the variables into account. Just the fact that I knew about his power turned this whole scenario on its head. He wouldn't have charged in like this without a backup, without a version of himself staying safe and secure in his underground base, just in case things went awry.
No. I might have seen the man die, but the more I thought about it, the less I could believe that man was Coil.

Finally, Taylor reached my conclusion, namely that Coil didn't died.

The one who died wasn't even a human being, but Genesis' projection, I'm 50% certain about this theory. Genesis continues to help Coil because of Noelle (this piss me off but I can understand the reason beyond her rash actions). But I have another theory about who that "Coil" might be, this is the reason why I said that I'm only half certain about Genesis' Coil Projection theory. Since Coil needs to leave a REAL body behind him so the people/heroes can be convinced that the body belongs to him and he's indeed dead, Genesis' projections can't be left behind, they simply disappear without a trace when they're destroyed. So, maybe is not a projection but one of Coil's soldiers forced by him to take his place (like a body double) under the threat that his family will be hurt if he refuse the deal.

Another human being died as "Coil", this possibility is more logical than Genesis' projection, given the careful steps that Coil took in order to be sure that his plan will be a great success.

The emergency response team had stopped outside, at the perimeter of the building. I listened through the bugs in the area, but I couldn't follow any of the conversation. Even tracking who was speaking was nearly impossible.

Whatever they had been discussing, they ventured inside. Some, who I gathered might be police officers, were moving to the most affected areas, the places where the reporters had been, the lobby. The paramedics proceeded down the aisles, too slowly for my liking, checking on the wounded.
"Help!" I called out, but my voice was nearly drowned out by the other wounded. It was one or two minutes before a paramedic saw the mayor and hurried to my side. I could tell where he was because of the bug I'd planted on him, but I couldn't say as much.
"I've got this," she said. The paramedic was a woman.
I gratefully backed away. Even the strain of pushing the makeshift bandage down had been making every ache and pain across my body stand out in sharp relief.
"Your name?" she asked me.
"Taylor."
A short distance away, my dad groaned a response, as if he'd heard my voice. I noticed more because of the mosquito I'd placed over his carotid artery than my ears. I didn't let on that I'd noticed anything.
"You shouldn't be moving, Taylor."
"I'm sore, but I don't think I'm hurt. I wanted to help."
"What kind of pain?"
"Bruises, aches. My dad took the brunt of it," I pointed in his general direction. "My face hurts, and, um, I can't see."
"Don't worry. Soon as we take care of the critically injured, we'll look after you."
"I'm alive," I said. "I mean, I'm okay. I'd rather you guys checked my dad and his friends, make sure they aren't hurt, help the other candidates, and the Director. They were stabbed before the explosion. All of them like this. Um. They were getting help when the bomb blew. I think whoever was helping them got knocked away by the explosion."
I was rambling. How fine was I?
The paramedic shouted, "Boroughs! Sturdevant! Manry! Girl here says there're MSW victims on the stage here!"
I could hear running footsteps, one of my bugs brushed against one of them as they ran past.
There wasn't much more I could do. I'd gladly out myself if it meant I could use my power to help people, maybe identify the most wounded, but I was worried it would do more harm than good, both in the short-term and in the long. I was left to sit there, blind, while the paramedic checked my dad over and then got someone else's help to lift him to the ground.
As the paramedics checked whether people were alive, others were rousing. I could hear the cries of pain, the shouts and screams.
Coil would answer for this. For the people he'd hurt for his own selfish ends. For knowingly putting me in the line of fire. For the lives he'd spent like currency.
"Taylor, was it?" the paramedic asked me.
"Yeah."
"You're very quiet. You're breathing hard-"
"Angry. And a little sore. But I'm okay. Really. There're others who need help."
"Others are getting help. We've got a lot of people here, and very few with serious injuries. You have a burn on your face, we're going to want to look after that."
"The reporters, at the back of the auditorium-"
"I thought you couldn't see."
"I remember seeing them there, just before it went off."
"Very few people were badly hurt. Less than you might think. Just stay calm."
If I hadn't used my bugs to see the evidence for myself, would I have been able to tell she was lying?
She wanted me to stay calm. It was odd, but I felt very calm, and I didn't feel like I was in shock. I was pissed, I was worried about my dad, worried that I was missing something critical with Coil's overarching plan, but I wasn't panicking, I wasn't stressing about the burn, or my eyes, or any of that.

Taylor is calm despite being blind and injured. Classical Taylor.

No matter how much she'll be hurt, she'll always think at other people first, then at herself if she still have time for that. If I were in her place, I'm sure that I'd have curled into a ball, cry uncontrollable and scream after help. But this is me, I behave like any normal human being. I'll not be a coward (I hate cowards, btw, especially when they're trained military people or already know how to fight), I'd be just a civilian who's be trapped in a hellish situation, is injured and afraid of everything that happen around. And this is Taylor, she behaves like any ABnormal human being.

I'm not sure how you'll make Coil pay by yourself, Taylor. I mean, I support you 1000000% for making him pay, I don't care about the used methods as long as at least one will work, but you can't defeat him alone. You're a single person against an madman surrounded by his army, you're now blind and hurt, your power is weak by comparison with his. He's like a God and you're like a mundane person. You need help. You need allies. You need Undersiders by your side, you need a plan, you need brains and muscles, you need good luck. Don't do something stupid like going after Coil by yourself, girl. He'll kill you even before you'll open your mouth to tell him how much he's going to pay for everything he did.

I'd handled worse, in terms of injuries. I wouldn't freak over that much. I'd love to be able to see what was going on, to not have to worry about permanent blindness, but I wouldn't worry about it until I could confirm how bad it was, confirm that it was permanent.

Sort of like how I was looking at the potential end of the world. I wouldn't worry about it until we'd exhausted every resource available and verified that in this era where countless people had the ability to break the fundamental rules of reality, someone couldn't stop it from happening.
"I am calm," I said, after confirming it for myself. I tried to take a deep breath to demonstrate, but winced at the pain from the bruising. I might have been pushed into the railing by the force of the explosion. "But I don't want you to worry about me. My dad-"
"The bald guy by the stairs?"
"Yeah."
"My partner's looking after him. Let's make sure you're okay. If there's spinal damage or internal damage and we're ignoring it and letting you move around like you have been, things could get much worse than they are now."
I shut my eyes, noting how the blurry white haze gave way to darkness. I could remember when Leviathan had hit me, how Panacea had noted internal damage that I'd been entirely unaware of. I sighed, opened my eyes to stare at the hazy figure. "Okay."
"We're going to be putting you onto a stretcher, but we won't be carrying you out for a minute. We can't leave you alone, but I'll need to help my partner carry your dad out. What we're going to do is put you next to someone, so someone can watch two or three of you at once."
"Okay."
I was lifted into place, then carried a short distance before being set down with great care. The paramedic there was talking with one of the other patients, leaving me free to think.
Why?
That was what got me. This whole thing bordered on senselessness. Hurting these people, putting me in the line of fire. Why attack the event? It would draw attention from heroes across the nation and it would make holding the city that much harder. Had he abandoned the plan? Or were there nuances I wasn't aware of?
What was deliberate, in how this had unfolded? He'd wanted to take out the mayor. But the candidates? Hadn't they been his?
I was looking at it the wrong way. Circus. She had been part of the plan from the beginning, and he'd hired her for an explicit reason. Her powers included her personal pocket dimension for storing items. I couldn't think of how that might be used. She had minor pyrokinesis, but that didn't apply here, either. She also had an enhanced sense of balance and enhanced coordination.
The balance wasn't a major thing here. But the coordination? The way she'd been able to casually target Piggot as she tossed the throwing knives over one shoulder? If I had to guess, Circus' knives had only killed the people Coil wanted dead. The others would have been hit in nonvital areas. Her enhanced hand-eye coordination would have given her the accuracy needed to ensure the knives hit where she wanted them to hit.
Über, then? Leet? What was the rationale for them? When we'd left the fundraiser and Coil had revealed himself as our employer, it had been Trainwreck in Coil's company, but Trainwreck had joined the Merchants, possibly at Coil's behest, and the Merchants had been eradicated. He was dead.
That led me to wonder if Coil had brought in Über as a stand-in for Trainwreck, wearing another heavy metal suit.
Was there a reason for why Coil wanted it?
Circus, Über, Leet, Chariot, the candidates… moving parts in a greater set of machinations that I wasn't aware of. The reporters, me, my dad, and any number of people in the area, we were the bystanders, the casualties.
And I couldn't get why. Was it to attack or assassinate the mayor and Director? To mark his candidates as survivors of a supervillain attack and give them more standing in the eyes of the public? It didn't make sense. Why go to the effort of positioning the Undersiders and the Travelers in the city if that was his goal? Any advantage he might glean from us holding territory would be counterbalanced by the chaos and the national attention that he drew from this kind of terrorism. It wouldn't be directed at him, because his body double had been killed in the attack, but it couldn't help, either.
If I thought about it, I could almost believe the bombing had been intentional. I couldn't say how he'd arranged it, but the fact that he'd thought to have a body double and the man had died and that 'Coil' was effectively off everyone's radar seemed too coincidental.

What is so hard to understand, Taylor? He planned everything. He recruited Uber and Leet to help him with the necessary technology, he recruited Circus to hurt/kill all the candidates, he "convinced" a man to take his place in his death or had Genesis create a projection for him, he waited for the right moment when the heroes will take action, he placed the entire blame for so many injured/dead people on heroes, he destroyed Emily Piggot's reputation and her future in PRT, he made everyone believe that he's dead and when there will be less chaos, people will realize that the City doesn't belong to them anymore. And there's no democracy left anymore. I mean, I don't think I have Taylor's intelligence and perspicacity, yet I can see the perspective of Coil's plans and doesn't seem complicated at all.

It was something I needed to ruminate on. Minutes passed, and I was left with only my bugs to occupy me, and the periodic attention of the paramedic who'd been assigned to watch me, making sure I was still alive and lucid. I directed bugs into the rubble, beneath the chairs that had been unrooted from the auditorium floor, under and onto bodies. Slowly, I gained a greater picture of the scene, a topographical map of what Coil had done. I couldn't count the bodies, not with the way the reporters had been pulverized, limbs and bones torn free and left lying beneath chairs or at the sides of the aisles

"We're moving you now," a man said.
"Me?"
"Yeah. Just stay put, don't move."
I was lifted into the air, carried past the ruined wall at the rear of the auditorium. I could smell the scent of death, the mingled smells of blood and shit, of human bodies that had been torn open, singed, the vitreous fluids and all the messy ugliness from inside our bodies exposed to the air. It seemed incongruous with the cool breeze and the gentle warmth of the sun on my face. I had to turn my head so the sun wasn't shining on the burn.
Shouldn't a catastrophe like this be met with rain? An overcast sky? It didn't seem right that things were so quiet, so calm, the day so tranquil when so many people had died, lost loved ones or suffered serious injury. I bit my lip, focusing on my bugs, sweeping them through the area as the ambulance made its way to the hospital and the paramedic in the back carefully checked my vitals, asking me questions about the degree of pain, stiffness here or there and checking for hard tissue where there might be internal injuries.
It was odd, going to the same hospital where I'd been taken after fighting Leviathan. I maintained a few bugs to feel things out – a stray housefly or mosquito would likely go unnoticed if it kept out of the way. There were no capes, no blue tags or red tags on the curtain rods, nor PRT uniforms keeping order and informing the staff of who they were treating.
They took me to a curtained off area, very similar to the one I'd been in before. Except here I was Taylor, not Skitter. I wasn't handcuffed, treated roughly or outed for my most damaging secrets. They investigated me thoroughly, shone a light in my eyes and asked me far too many questions. A cream was spread across the mild burn on a quarter of my face, and the nurse picked grit out from beneath my skin. The process hurt, but it was a two at most on a scale of one to ten. I'd dealt with tens before.
The fact that I couldn't see was starting to wear on me. My left eye was worse than my right, but neither let me see details, only smudges. Only light and dark. I was so used to having an unnaturally broad sense of what was going on, but I'd just had one of my most essential senses stripped away from me.
As the medical professionals left, a young woman slipped into the curtained enclosure.
"Hey," she said. "You're alive?"
"Lisa?"
"Yeah."
"Honeybee-T."
"Praying-mantis-R. You're blind. Damn, that sucks," she said.
"Yeah," I sighed. "My dad?"
"He's okay. Looked in on him. He woke up and was asking after you. He doesn't like me much, anymore."

Lisa is there to take care of her blind and vulnerable (The only time I saw Taylor being so vulnerable like I'm seeing her now was during her staying in the hospital right after she was injured by Leviathan, before being healed by Amy) friend and teammate.

Quickly, Taylor, tell Lisa everything that happened, including your assumptions about Coil's role in this terrorist attack, maybe she'll explain what really happened and come with smart solutions to take Coil down and stop Brockton Bay from turning into a second North Korea. If there's a single person who can handle Coil masterfully, that crazy motherfucker would be Lisa. :lol

"You took me away from him. He'll blame you for that because it's easier than blaming me, I guess."

"I guess." I planted a mosquito between her shoulder blades, and I could track her as she stepped closer, crouching with her arms resting on the rail of the hospital bed. When she spoke, she was quiet enough that only I could hear her. "We can get you a healer or something. Kidnap someone like Othala, have Regent or Grue use her powers."
"Othala isn't around. Left the city."
"We'll hire someone with healing powers, then."
"They won't want to come here, because of the very thing you were talking about with Othala. Word's probably out about us owning the city, especially after we kicked out groups like the Chosen, and Faultline's crew. They'll tell people just how dangerous we are, the kind of tactics we can employ, like using Regent or Grue."
"We have options."
"I know. I'm not worried about me. What gets me is what happened. So many were hurt or killed."
"Lots hurt, not so many killed, from what I've seen and heard on the subject. But that's not important right now. What are your priorities?"
I blinked. "My dad-"
"Is fine."
"My territory, the fires?"
"Strategically placed, nowhere near our real lairs. Nobody hurt, but I think he molotov'd one of your barracks, setting the fire high so people had a chance to get out."
"The others, Grue-"
"They weren't anywhere nearby. We're going to meet up with them soon."
"Dinah."
"Now you're on track. We've talked about plans. And Coil-"
"He's alive, right?" I asked.
"Mm hmm," Lisa affirmed. "And better for us, he's probably happy. Everything's coming together for him, just the way he wanted it to. Which means that right now, today, is going to be our best bet for talking to him, getting at him when he's in a mood to release the tyke. Come on, out of bed."
My head was spinning, but it wasn't a concussion at work. After everything I'd done, everything I'd put in, we were this close? I accepted Lisa's help in getting out of the hospital bed, and she hooked her arm beneath mine to lead me away.
"So we just ask, and hope he's feeling good enough to say yes?" Which means biting my tongue when it comes to the accusations, calling him on what he did at the debate.
Lisa spoke at a more normal volume, "He doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'll be influenced much by his emotions. He probably decided a while ago whether he'll give up the girl or not. But I say we should take anything we can get, and that includes approaching him on a good day. Choose your words carefully, by the way. There's bystanders."

I don't think that Lisa believes a single promise that Coil ever made but she can't argue with a surprising still naive Taylor who is still under impression that Coil will say to her "thank you" for her help, give her gifts and flowers, apologize for Dinah and wave after them when Taylor will leave with Dinah. Yep, Taylor, and unicorns and faeries exist for real too. Well, actually a "faerie"- kind of- exists and she's locked in Birdcage.

Also, Narwal can be "mistaken" for an unicorn "thanks" to her horn.

But even in a setting like Worm multiverse, Coil keeping a single promise is something that will break the entire reality in pieces if it will ever happen. Superpowered people, aliens and multiple universes aren't so unrealistic and absurd as Coil's word of honor.

rofl:

I nodded, but I didn't follow as she tugged on my arm. "Can we check on my dad before we go?"

"They were moving him when I poked my head in. I peeked at his chart, and it looks like they had queued him up for an MRI, what with his recent internal injuries from Shatterbird's attack."
I winced.
She went on, "I told him I might take you to my dad's clinic, where the load won't be as high, if you were okay to be moved. If I did take you, it'd mean you were okay. He didn't like that, but he agreed. That doesn't mean we can't stay if you want to stay. Like I said, it won't make a huge difference if we get in touch with our boss now or two hours from now."
"But it'll make a difference? A bit of one?"
"I think so."
I thought back to my earlier feeling, that leaving my dad just the one more time might mean some kind of terminal break.
Stacking that up against everything I'd done with the end-goal of getting Dinah out of captivity, though… not even Dinah, exactly. I barely knew her. No, this was more selfish, I had to admit. I was thinking of my own sense of guilt, about my own responsibility, and the crimes I'd committed in getting this far. The terror, pain and distress I'd caused in the course of being Skitter.
Fifteen and a half years spent growing up with my dad versus two months as Skitter. My dad was there, though. He'd always been there, and the only thing I had to suggest that he wouldn't was a vague feeling.
Just like there was only the vaguest possibility that our going to see Coil nowwould make the difference in him setting Dinah free.
"My dad's going to be okay?" I asked.
"He was fine. No sign of any deeper problems or pain."
"Then let's go."
We made our way out of the hospital. I could hear the cries of pain.
"Are we to blame for this?"
"No. Don't set yourself on this path. We didn't know, we couldn't know, and we weren't complicit in any way."
"I was there. I could have stepped up and done something, but I didn't."
"Done what? Fought back? Helped the wards?"
"Yes."
"No. Best case scenario, you might have tripped him up. But it wouldn't have been worth it. Watch your step. Stairs."
I had no problem identifying the spots I was supposed to step down. There were spiders on the underside of the stairwell, and I sent a few flies forward to alight on the underside of each stair to check the footing.
"It's funny," Lisa murmured, lowering her voice, "I've been meaning to suggest a training program. That you should spend a while blindfolded, see if we can't force you to rely on your power to see, get your brain to the point that you can actually process that info. Guess you beat me to the punch."
"It's not that funny," I said. I didn't like thinking about what might happen if I was still blind when the next disaster came along.
"Stepping outside," she said. I felt the warm air sweep past me as the door opened. "Car's just over here. Nice thing about the city being in this state, it's easy to find parking spots."
She sounded so jovial, cheery. I wasn't nearly so optimistic.
She led us to the car, and opened the door for me. "We'll stop by your place so you can grab your costume and meet up with the others. Then we'll find Coil."
"Find him? He's not at his base?" I raised my voice to be heard as she walked around to the other side of the car and opened the door to get into the driver's seat.
"He's not at his base. As of now, Coil's dead and gone. He's sticking to his civilian identity. Which is going to make meeting him and talking to him sort of difficult."
I paused. I'd been thinking over the scenario, calculating Coil's overarching goal. "Is he Keith Grove?"
"No," Lisa said. "One sec."
The car started up, and there was a shuffling sound as she dug through a container.
A recording played over the car's sound system. Lisa shifted the car into gear and reversed out of her spot. I listened.
"A town meeting with hundreds of Brockton Bay residents was interrupted by a terrorist attack by a local villain just earlier today, an alleged assassination turned to even greater tragedy as a superhero-made piece of technology exploded unexpectedly.
"This tragedy joins countless others that have recently befallen Brockton Bay, a city that was recently the subject of national discussion, where the United States Senate debated condemning the city, evacuating the remaining citizens and abandoning it as a lost cause. A local crime lord headed a small group of supervillains in an attempt to assassinate Mayor Christner, Mayoral Candidate Keith Grove and Mayoral Candidate Carlene Padillo. When local heroes intervened, however, a device owned by local Wards member 'Kid Win' malfunctioned, ultimately exploding in the lobby of the building. While the number of casualties is yet unconfirmed, we can confirm that WCVN's own on-site reporter and camera crew perished in the blast. More information will be forthcoming as we have it.
"First reports from the site report allegations of sabotage on the part of a known double agent within the group of junior heroes. No members of the Brockton Bay PRT, Protectorate or Wards teams were available for comment, but sources inside the organization report that Director Emily Piggot, manager of the city's PRT and government sponsored hero teams, is being put on leave pending a full investigation.
"Filling in for the interim is Commander Thomas Calvert.

Thomas Calvert is that asshole with BALLS SMALLER THAN AN ANT'S BALLS from Nilbog Interlude, who killed in cold blood his commander because he was too much of a coward to fight and die like a soldier HE WAS, right? Yes, I remember that bastard and I was hoping that he'll not appear again.

But Wildbow crushed my hopes just like that; thank you, dude, for being such a "kind" person. Thomas is going to replace Emily, a COWARD with microscopic balls taking the place of one of the BRAVEST non-powered people I've seen in this story. Talking about how unfair this life can be sometimes.

I feel bad for Emily. And I can bet on anything you want that Thomas is Coil's man and one of Coil's maneuvers was to place one of his men at the helm of the only organisation that can ever stop him. The only way I can see things getting even worse than they're actually is for Alexandria and Eidolon to protect Coil because their REAL boss considers Coil to be useful to her. I'm so freaking pissed and angry with this unhappy turn of events. :rage:

All I want is for Coil to beg for mercy while people are preparing to kill him, not for him to make others beg for mercy while he's crushing them under his boots. :rage:

When asked about this new placement, the PRT reported that Commander Calvert served as a PRT field agent before an honorable discharge. For the past several years he has offered his expertise to the PRT as a paid consultant in parahuman affairs for New York, Brockton Bay and Boston, later serving as a field commander for the PRT strike squads. The PRT expresses full confidence in Commander Calvert's ability to handle the daunting task of Brockton Bay's parahuman-"

The sound cut out. Lisa had stopped the recording.
"Thomas Calvert," I said.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!

THOMAS CALVERT IS NOT COIL'S MAN BUT COIL HIMSELF!!! He's Coil's identity while in civilian. His real name is Thomas the Coward Asshole. I didn't expected at this. I honestly didn't expected at this.

I'm...I don't know what to say except for...if I need more reasons to hate Coil, I just found another one: he's a fucking COWARD. He's the most cowardly supervillain in the entire story. Jack himself is light years braver than Thomas will ever be. As bad as Jack is and even if he relies way too much on a little girl's help, at least he proved to be a good and courageous fighter, when he fought offscreen against Oni Lee and defeated him and onscreen against Skitter, winning easily. While Thomas is a coward who can't take a step without using his power for a couple of times and who'll be defeated by almost any Undersider (except Lisa and Alec who suck at fighting) if they'll challenge him to a non-power fight.

REASONS TO HATE THOMAS FUCKING COIL

(CREDIT Infinite Serpent- WIP)
Now he's PRT Director while in civilian. Another successful part of his plan. FUCK COIL.

The legend says that famous Tinkers are still looking after new ways to locate and identity Thomas Calvert aka Coil's invisible microscopic balls. Maybe they'll be successful one day.

Good night and sleep well, my friends.

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

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