- Location
- Earth, probably.
- Pronouns
- None/Any
Well, let's see how that works out for them.
Silence is Not Consent
- Thread starter justanothercat
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
The medium term consequence for this I see happening is it becoming obvious to anyone who thinks about it even a little that Tori would literally rather risk death than go see Amy.
RadiantPhoenix
Trudging up the Hill
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
She'd almost certainly choose certain death over Amy, not just a risk.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Yes, but figuring that out requires more knowledge than just this one public incident.
Maybe it is someone hired by Carol to force her to come home and be healed....
*Hides tin foil hat*
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nah, Carol would have Skitter stabbed instead.
Now that I'm remembering, the Fallen are before or after the S9?
The Fallen are after, they coincide closely with Accord in canon. Though keep in mind that
1. time is stretched between events here (as mentioned in the first chapter)
2. this happened after the death of Coil originally. Things have progressed quite differently and the politics of the Bay have shifted as a result
- Location
- The Hub
Whatever the case, if Valefor tries any of his canon shit his head'll be bitchslapped all over the nearest wall.
- Location
- Earth, Sol System, Virgo Supercluster, Earth-1218
I mentioned this on SV, I suspect the backstabbing to be figurative, and involve Assault and Miss Militia coming to "disperse the crowd" because obviously nothing good could come from a villain assembling a large mob. (Ignoring that this has been a repeated occurrence since Leviathan and it's only after Tori got rescued that the Heroes became interested in stopping it)
nmWarden
Webcomic Glutton
- Location
- Texas
Huzzah, new chapter!
...
Well that's stressful and alarming.
A mundane knife hitting her back from a melee attack is improbable due to Skitter's clairvoyance. A stranger (bypassing the field to sneak in) with a mundane knife in melee is improbable because Glory Girl was known to be a durable Alexandria package.
A ranged attack with a mundane knife should have been caught by Skitter's distant bugs.
I was going to go through more scenarios, but I'm tired. My main theory is that some cape power is at play disguised what actually happened. Her injury was not a literal knife, it is something annoying like wound transference or sensing signals of pain to her nerves.
Instead I'll speculate on who did this. Oni Lee supposedly died to Jack Slash, but he could have brought the body to Bonesaw. Or Oni Lee could have just survived. However GG probably didn't fight him... ever.
Nazi capes... more probable, but they don't have a record of killing child heroes. Tori doesn't have a history of breaking the bones of their capes, just their minions (so who would care, except a new trigger)...
Remnants of the defeated Merchants? Faultline's Crew?
The Fallen, Ambassadors, The Teeth... Going in reverse order, I think members of the Teeth would have a bit more style. They'd try to provoke fear with their words, or smash some beer bottles. They'd defy cape rules and use guns instead, recklessly rather than like this. The Ambassadors, unless one is betraying Accord, would not ruin what Skitter is building. The Fallen... seem pretty likely, but I'm at a loss for a motivation here. Skitter hasn't mailed any of them yet.
I assume the intent here is to defy Skitter's aura of invinicibity in front of the community by hurtinf the weak link: Tori, who isn't known to be a cape by these people.
I have a fun theory, but it unfortunately it plays on stereotypes of mental illness in fiction.
.
...
Well that's stressful and alarming.
A mundane knife hitting her back from a melee attack is improbable due to Skitter's clairvoyance. A stranger (bypassing the field to sneak in) with a mundane knife in melee is improbable because Glory Girl was known to be a durable Alexandria package.
A ranged attack with a mundane knife should have been caught by Skitter's distant bugs.
I was going to go through more scenarios, but I'm tired. My main theory is that some cape power is at play disguised what actually happened. Her injury was not a literal knife, it is something annoying like wound transference or sensing signals of pain to her nerves.
Instead I'll speculate on who did this. Oni Lee supposedly died to Jack Slash, but he could have brought the body to Bonesaw. Or Oni Lee could have just survived. However GG probably didn't fight him... ever.
Nazi capes... more probable, but they don't have a record of killing child heroes. Tori doesn't have a history of breaking the bones of their capes, just their minions (so who would care, except a new trigger)...
Remnants of the defeated Merchants? Faultline's Crew?
The Fallen, Ambassadors, The Teeth... Going in reverse order, I think members of the Teeth would have a bit more style. They'd try to provoke fear with their words, or smash some beer bottles. They'd defy cape rules and use guns instead, recklessly rather than like this. The Ambassadors, unless one is betraying Accord, would not ruin what Skitter is building. The Fallen... seem pretty likely, but I'm at a loss for a motivation here. Skitter hasn't mailed any of them yet.
I assume the intent here is to defy Skitter's aura of invinicibity in front of the community by hurtinf the weak link: Tori, who isn't known to be a cape by these people.
I have a fun theory, but it unfortunately it plays on stereotypes of mental illness in fiction.
One of the unstable minions of Coil stuck around, after getting dismissed by Grue or TT for rehire; or they just went to ground out of paranoia. They have been picked up by the Fallen, either mastered or legitimately convinced to join the crazy cult's activities temporarily. Perhaps for money, or something weird that the Fallen have to offer.
Supernova 5.A
The sunbeam cut straight through the window like an arrow, piercing through the blinds and right into Alec's eyes. He groaned and turned over, but the light followed him, slanting across the bed and bouncing off the metal of his bedside lamp. He smacked his lips, feeling them curl down in disgust. His mouth tasted like something had died in it, and there was sleep crusting his eyes.
"Fuck," he muttered, cracking an eye open and working his jaw, "'time's it?"
He looked blearily at the clock, which brightly announced it was 10:47am. Ugh. Any day that he had to be awake before noon was a crime in his eyes, especially given that he'd been running a quarter of the city for a month now. But the list of things to do never ended. Especially today.
Rolling over with a grunt, he fumbled blindly on the table until he found his watch and slipped it on his wrist. His clothes were strewn across the floor from where he'd stripped them off last night, some still piled on the foot of the bed. Normally he'd have used someone else to clean them up, but all his regulars were out right now. The nearest familiar nervous system was... ugh, streets away.
Alec grunted again as he rolled out of the bed and onto his feet, bending low to pick up a spare pair of boxers and yank them on. It was always strange when he didn't have puppets. It made him feel… less. Not in a bad way, just a way he wasn't used to. He'd been around people he could control for most of his life. He'd spent more time actively puppeting people than not until leaving his dear old dad. How could being stuck in one body, one pair of eyes, compare to that?
Still, it wasn't surprising that they'd left for the night. It was always an open bet whether any of them stayed. The heroes liked to accuse Regent of hijacking people, controlling them for his amusement, keeping them as slaves.
Alec pulled on a shirt, and let out a huff of laughter under his breath.
Did none of them realize just how absurd that was? Did any of them even think about the logistics of it? His power didn't work when he slept. That meant every night he'd be at risk of one of his not so willing puppets slitting his throat. It meant he'd need to put them away in their little cages, make sure they got fed, changed, go to the bathroom–
In short? It'd be work. And there was nothing Alec hated more than work.
As he finished getting dressed and gargled some mouthwash, his eyes caught on his backpack. He'd packed it the night before, a rare instance of doing a task before it was needed rather than after. Looking at it now, the tasks in front of him didn't seem any easier. He probably could've gotten someone else to do everything for him if he'd wanted. Some of his people would be back eventually, or he could cast out for more "volunteers".
But that would just be spending more effort on something he didn't want to do to begin with. And besides, he wouldn't need any of them for this.
Alec bent down and picked the backpack up. It was fine; just a few errands. Sure, it was going to be boring, but that was hardly new. He checked the contents before swinging it onto his shoulders. Basic supplies, money, medicine, a spare costume… he shouldn't need any of it besides the money, but it never hurt to have extras.
He turned and started to head out the door, but paused as he rounded on the table by the kitchen. A small folded piece of paper sat there, left over from last night. He considered it for a moment, reached out to pick it up, and hesitated with his fingers just shy of touching it.
Then he shook his head, left it where it was, and turned away. The door swung shut behind him on a silent, empty building.
Alec hummed as he walked down the sidewalk. It was a bright day; the sun had mostly burned away at the overcast spell they'd been stuck in for a little while and was now shining down like it had something to prove. His clothes were showing more skin than he would've with Taylor and the rest – better to offset his profile from what people might expect. The US was silly and puritanical with all its nonsense about body image, but it meant that the less he wore the less people looked at him. Up to a certain point, anyways.
His feet ached, his hands twitched idly at his sides. He'd been walking briskly for about twenty minutes now, and his legs were starting to hurt. Alec was staunchly against exercise on principle. Why suffer through that indignity when he could get other people to do it for him?
At times like this he remembered one of his old fallbacks. What had her name been? Trixie? Tracey? Her body was nice. Reliable and well trained. The muscles were used to responding quickly to commands, and worked fluidly even when stressed. It burned in a good way, the mark of a strong athlete. He'd miss her.
Still, he mused as he neared his destination, it wasn't all bad. This would present the chance to snag some new play material, if nothing else. The store bell jingled as he opened the door, but he didn't pay it any mind. His eyes went straight to the aisles. Doorknobs, pipe fittings, shower curtains; why were all these stores so strangely laid out? What was this, the home improvement section?
Finally, he found what he was looking for. Snacks.
Alec walked into the aisle. Immediately his eye caught on a shopping cart filled with odds and ends. Toothpaste, shampoo, soda, some chips. Nice! He quickly glanced around the store for onlookers, then ambled up to the cart and pushed it away. Hey, whatever they didn't see wouldn't hurt them, right? He was sure what's-her-face would be fine without her stuff.
Whistling a catchy tune from a game he played a while back, he threw a few more random items into his cart. A new toothbrush, a bottle of mouthwash, a hair comb to replace his old one, a bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo conditioner, and some deodorant. He paused for a moment at the hair dye, considering it from a couple angles. He was changing up his look in response to recent events, and dyeing his hair would be a fairly quick way to achieve that. Ultimately, the memory of Cherie's stupid red streak convinced him to move on. Maybe in a few months after he'd had time to stop associating dyed hair with his sister.
Yet another example of family ruining things he otherwise liked.
Mood soured, he checked out at the register, paying in cash and carefully arranging things in his backpack as they were scanned. One of the many benefits of the collapse of civilization was being able to pack his backpack at the register without people giving him dirty looks or demanding to search it. Less work for him, and he was always a fan of less work.
Mentally checking another box, he hopped on the bus to handle his last bit of business for the day.
The bus seat was slightly sticky, the windows grimy, and its progress slow. Public transportation was never the greatest in Brockton Bay, or even America as a whole, but post Leviathan it managed to be even worse. At least things had recovered enough that the buses were running at all. This would be a lot more difficult for him if he had to get a car.
He could drive without a puppet but it was a pain in the ass.
That was another reason he wasn't a fan of Little Miss Perfect Hero's unmasking plan. He wasn't that good at a lot of things. Not on his own. He had a lot of general skills – you had to after living on the street long enough – but he tended to lean on his puppet's ingrained skills for anything that required practice. Academic knowledge is not the same thing as practical knowledge, and his body didn't learn habits or skills even if his mind picked them up. Muscle memory took too long to bother with when you could cheat.
He unzipped his backpack, pulling out a gameboy and loading up a cartridge. That damn tune was still stuck in his head. The game wasn't even that good, but the music had lodged itself in his brain and stuck there for days. Like an itch he couldn't scratch. Fuck, there it was again. He'd be lucky if he managed to squirm his way into someone in the next day.
He paused on the continue screen, staring at the second save file. Aisha's name stood out to him and he felt the slightest pang of something before it vanished. Right, she'd been playing this game the other day. That was an odd thing to have a feeling about.
Aisha was the only one of the group he really got along with. Lisa knew him a bit, that just made things more complicated. Taylor had never tried to understand him, but that was fine because he'd never bothered trying to understand her. Rachel was simple, and he did his best to let her do her thing while he did his. Brian was like a nagging older brother, and he'd had enough of nagging siblings over the course of his life.
But Aisha was different. Aisha understood, and they were friends. Almost family. Maybe more.
He didn't like to think of her that way. Didn't like to think of anyone that way. Family wasn't a good thing in his experience, and Aishia was one of the only good things in his life. He had almost started to see the Undersiders as being that close, which was why he had to do this now, even if it was inconvenient. Glory Girl's plan was the catalyst, but it was going to have to happen sooner or later anyway. Partly was to protect them, but mostly just because he'd overstayed his welcome. He'd gotten too attached, and that never ended well for him.
The bus slowed to a crawl. Another stop on the way out. He paused. It wasn't too late. He could still get up. Still walk down the steps and out that door. He could hitch a ride, or get a cab, or just walk.
Why was he even considering this? He hated getting mixed up in some stupid moral crisis, and this plan stunk of that. More danger, with less freedom? No thank you.
Her face lingered in his head.
The bus let out a squeak of compressed air as the door hissed shut, and started moving away again. Alec relaxed in his chair. Well, that was that.
He started to tap at his gameboy again, humming a tune under his breath and banishing his thoughts of family. Out the window, a sign cheerfully announced his departure from Brockton Bay.
"Hey you lazy bastard, what's up? Clearly not you since you can't answer your texts worth a damn. Decided to fall into a coma on me or some... thing?"
A girl walked into a bedroom. She looked at the table. She picked up a folded piece of paper. She read it.
"That bitch."
A piece of paper fluttered to the ground in an empty room.
Dearest Aisha,
I hope this letter finds you well on this horrible sunny day. I'm leaving you this message because my heart is twisted in twain, and you must know that it's not you, it's me. What we had was wonderful, but alas, my future in the Bay is either woefully short or non-existent and as such I must bid you adieu.
Or in plain English, I'm leaving because this whole plan Glory and Taylor cooked up isn't my thing and would just put a target on my back. Maybe things would've been different if we weren't pulling up the curtain, but oh well. Try not to be too upset about it. I left the playstation behind, and feel free to save over my old files.
Say bye to the others for me, just don't be too mushy about it.
-Alec.
A/N:
And so the curtain rises. Or sets? Maybe it's an interlude? Or a intermission? I didn't really think this metaphor through. Writing Alec is hard, but I'm hoping I managed well here.
No, this is not an elaborate rug pull or "oh he shows up later". Alec is gone. He doesn't show up for the rest of the story. And the reasoning for that should be laid out pretty clearly here. Maybe in another world, where Tori and Taylor resolved the communication issue before this point, they could've had that conversation. But they didn't and he didn't. So the only way out was out. Alec was never going to be willing to unmask. And with that knowledge, what happened last chapter should be a lot clearer.
Today's rec is an essay on Alec's Costume by ewingstan on Tumblr, which does an excellent job breaking down his character in terms of psychology and code switching between his cape self and who he is regularly. Or rather, how there's not much difference at all. I'll see you all next week.
"Fuck," he muttered, cracking an eye open and working his jaw, "'time's it?"
He looked blearily at the clock, which brightly announced it was 10:47am. Ugh. Any day that he had to be awake before noon was a crime in his eyes, especially given that he'd been running a quarter of the city for a month now. But the list of things to do never ended. Especially today.
Rolling over with a grunt, he fumbled blindly on the table until he found his watch and slipped it on his wrist. His clothes were strewn across the floor from where he'd stripped them off last night, some still piled on the foot of the bed. Normally he'd have used someone else to clean them up, but all his regulars were out right now. The nearest familiar nervous system was... ugh, streets away.
Alec grunted again as he rolled out of the bed and onto his feet, bending low to pick up a spare pair of boxers and yank them on. It was always strange when he didn't have puppets. It made him feel… less. Not in a bad way, just a way he wasn't used to. He'd been around people he could control for most of his life. He'd spent more time actively puppeting people than not until leaving his dear old dad. How could being stuck in one body, one pair of eyes, compare to that?
Still, it wasn't surprising that they'd left for the night. It was always an open bet whether any of them stayed. The heroes liked to accuse Regent of hijacking people, controlling them for his amusement, keeping them as slaves.
Alec pulled on a shirt, and let out a huff of laughter under his breath.
Did none of them realize just how absurd that was? Did any of them even think about the logistics of it? His power didn't work when he slept. That meant every night he'd be at risk of one of his not so willing puppets slitting his throat. It meant he'd need to put them away in their little cages, make sure they got fed, changed, go to the bathroom–
In short? It'd be work. And there was nothing Alec hated more than work.
As he finished getting dressed and gargled some mouthwash, his eyes caught on his backpack. He'd packed it the night before, a rare instance of doing a task before it was needed rather than after. Looking at it now, the tasks in front of him didn't seem any easier. He probably could've gotten someone else to do everything for him if he'd wanted. Some of his people would be back eventually, or he could cast out for more "volunteers".
But that would just be spending more effort on something he didn't want to do to begin with. And besides, he wouldn't need any of them for this.
Alec bent down and picked the backpack up. It was fine; just a few errands. Sure, it was going to be boring, but that was hardly new. He checked the contents before swinging it onto his shoulders. Basic supplies, money, medicine, a spare costume… he shouldn't need any of it besides the money, but it never hurt to have extras.
He turned and started to head out the door, but paused as he rounded on the table by the kitchen. A small folded piece of paper sat there, left over from last night. He considered it for a moment, reached out to pick it up, and hesitated with his fingers just shy of touching it.
Then he shook his head, left it where it was, and turned away. The door swung shut behind him on a silent, empty building.
Alec hummed as he walked down the sidewalk. It was a bright day; the sun had mostly burned away at the overcast spell they'd been stuck in for a little while and was now shining down like it had something to prove. His clothes were showing more skin than he would've with Taylor and the rest – better to offset his profile from what people might expect. The US was silly and puritanical with all its nonsense about body image, but it meant that the less he wore the less people looked at him. Up to a certain point, anyways.
His feet ached, his hands twitched idly at his sides. He'd been walking briskly for about twenty minutes now, and his legs were starting to hurt. Alec was staunchly against exercise on principle. Why suffer through that indignity when he could get other people to do it for him?
At times like this he remembered one of his old fallbacks. What had her name been? Trixie? Tracey? Her body was nice. Reliable and well trained. The muscles were used to responding quickly to commands, and worked fluidly even when stressed. It burned in a good way, the mark of a strong athlete. He'd miss her.
Still, he mused as he neared his destination, it wasn't all bad. This would present the chance to snag some new play material, if nothing else. The store bell jingled as he opened the door, but he didn't pay it any mind. His eyes went straight to the aisles. Doorknobs, pipe fittings, shower curtains; why were all these stores so strangely laid out? What was this, the home improvement section?
Finally, he found what he was looking for. Snacks.
Alec walked into the aisle. Immediately his eye caught on a shopping cart filled with odds and ends. Toothpaste, shampoo, soda, some chips. Nice! He quickly glanced around the store for onlookers, then ambled up to the cart and pushed it away. Hey, whatever they didn't see wouldn't hurt them, right? He was sure what's-her-face would be fine without her stuff.
Whistling a catchy tune from a game he played a while back, he threw a few more random items into his cart. A new toothbrush, a bottle of mouthwash, a hair comb to replace his old one, a bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo conditioner, and some deodorant. He paused for a moment at the hair dye, considering it from a couple angles. He was changing up his look in response to recent events, and dyeing his hair would be a fairly quick way to achieve that. Ultimately, the memory of Cherie's stupid red streak convinced him to move on. Maybe in a few months after he'd had time to stop associating dyed hair with his sister.
Yet another example of family ruining things he otherwise liked.
Mood soured, he checked out at the register, paying in cash and carefully arranging things in his backpack as they were scanned. One of the many benefits of the collapse of civilization was being able to pack his backpack at the register without people giving him dirty looks or demanding to search it. Less work for him, and he was always a fan of less work.
Mentally checking another box, he hopped on the bus to handle his last bit of business for the day.
The bus seat was slightly sticky, the windows grimy, and its progress slow. Public transportation was never the greatest in Brockton Bay, or even America as a whole, but post Leviathan it managed to be even worse. At least things had recovered enough that the buses were running at all. This would be a lot more difficult for him if he had to get a car.
He could drive without a puppet but it was a pain in the ass.
That was another reason he wasn't a fan of Little Miss Perfect Hero's unmasking plan. He wasn't that good at a lot of things. Not on his own. He had a lot of general skills – you had to after living on the street long enough – but he tended to lean on his puppet's ingrained skills for anything that required practice. Academic knowledge is not the same thing as practical knowledge, and his body didn't learn habits or skills even if his mind picked them up. Muscle memory took too long to bother with when you could cheat.
He unzipped his backpack, pulling out a gameboy and loading up a cartridge. That damn tune was still stuck in his head. The game wasn't even that good, but the music had lodged itself in his brain and stuck there for days. Like an itch he couldn't scratch. Fuck, there it was again. He'd be lucky if he managed to squirm his way into someone in the next day.
He paused on the continue screen, staring at the second save file. Aisha's name stood out to him and he felt the slightest pang of something before it vanished. Right, she'd been playing this game the other day. That was an odd thing to have a feeling about.
Aisha was the only one of the group he really got along with. Lisa knew him a bit, that just made things more complicated. Taylor had never tried to understand him, but that was fine because he'd never bothered trying to understand her. Rachel was simple, and he did his best to let her do her thing while he did his. Brian was like a nagging older brother, and he'd had enough of nagging siblings over the course of his life.
But Aisha was different. Aisha understood, and they were friends. Almost family. Maybe more.
He didn't like to think of her that way. Didn't like to think of anyone that way. Family wasn't a good thing in his experience, and Aishia was one of the only good things in his life. He had almost started to see the Undersiders as being that close, which was why he had to do this now, even if it was inconvenient. Glory Girl's plan was the catalyst, but it was going to have to happen sooner or later anyway. Partly was to protect them, but mostly just because he'd overstayed his welcome. He'd gotten too attached, and that never ended well for him.
The bus slowed to a crawl. Another stop on the way out. He paused. It wasn't too late. He could still get up. Still walk down the steps and out that door. He could hitch a ride, or get a cab, or just walk.
Why was he even considering this? He hated getting mixed up in some stupid moral crisis, and this plan stunk of that. More danger, with less freedom? No thank you.
Her face lingered in his head.
The bus let out a squeak of compressed air as the door hissed shut, and started moving away again. Alec relaxed in his chair. Well, that was that.
He started to tap at his gameboy again, humming a tune under his breath and banishing his thoughts of family. Out the window, a sign cheerfully announced his departure from Brockton Bay.
"Hey you lazy bastard, what's up? Clearly not you since you can't answer your texts worth a damn. Decided to fall into a coma on me or some... thing?"
A girl walked into a bedroom. She looked at the table. She picked up a folded piece of paper. She read it.
"That bitch."
A piece of paper fluttered to the ground in an empty room.
Dearest Aisha,
I hope this letter finds you well on this horrible sunny day. I'm leaving you this message because my heart is twisted in twain, and you must know that it's not you, it's me. What we had was wonderful, but alas, my future in the Bay is either woefully short or non-existent and as such I must bid you adieu.
Or in plain English, I'm leaving because this whole plan Glory and Taylor cooked up isn't my thing and would just put a target on my back. Maybe things would've been different if we weren't pulling up the curtain, but oh well. Try not to be too upset about it. I left the playstation behind, and feel free to save over my old files.
Say bye to the others for me, just don't be too mushy about it.
-Alec.
A/N:
And so the curtain rises. Or sets? Maybe it's an interlude? Or a intermission? I didn't really think this metaphor through. Writing Alec is hard, but I'm hoping I managed well here.
No, this is not an elaborate rug pull or "oh he shows up later". Alec is gone. He doesn't show up for the rest of the story. And the reasoning for that should be laid out pretty clearly here. Maybe in another world, where Tori and Taylor resolved the communication issue before this point, they could've had that conversation. But they didn't and he didn't. So the only way out was out. Alec was never going to be willing to unmask. And with that knowledge, what happened last chapter should be a lot clearer.
Today's rec is an essay on Alec's Costume by ewingstan on Tumblr, which does an excellent job breaking down his character in terms of psychology and code switching between his cape self and who he is regularly. Or rather, how there's not much difference at all. I'll see you all next week.
Zedman7054
Eternally 3rd
- Location
- United States
Yeah. Aisha's mad. Good news is that might make Grue more sympathetic, nothing like your sister attacking someone out of the blue out of misplaced anger to make you feel like you owe them.
And really, this isn't entirely Vicky's fault. It's her plan, and Taylor is backing it, but it was Alec's choice to leave. Not that Aisha will care. What she had with Alec meant something to her, and him walking out on her life is...a lot of things.
It's really sad to see the Undersiders fall apart though. Knowing how it would have turned out, a group that was so loyal to each other that they were willing to band together at the end of the world to try and save it...
And really, this isn't entirely Vicky's fault. It's her plan, and Taylor is backing it, but it was Alec's choice to leave. Not that Aisha will care. What she had with Alec meant something to her, and him walking out on her life is...a lot of things.
It's really sad to see the Undersiders fall apart though. Knowing how it would have turned out, a group that was so loyal to each other that they were willing to band together at the end of the world to try and save it...
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
It was either this or a damned Heartbreaker arc. Alec made the right choice, even though I'll miss him.
...wait, but how does this relate the to stabbing? Alec being directly responsible would mean he still has a place in the story (and also he doesn't give enough of a fuck to risk his life like that)... Sophia coming back? I don't think the timing works for that... is Aisha extremely upset and/or thinks nobody can deduce it was her?
*rereads bit right before the note* Okay, yeah, Aisha.
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- Location
- Earth, probably.
- Pronouns
- None/Any
I had a guess that it was Aisha doing the stabbing, but now I'm actually wondering. That feels almost too obvious. Then again, she's the only one who could have realistically got past Taylor's bugs with a knife...
To be entirely fair here, the interlude was meant to make this point. The previous chapter left you with three questions. Who did it? Why did they do it? And how are they gonna handle the fallout? This chapter answered 1 and 2 (mostly). The next answers 3 and gives more context behind 2.
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nmWarden
Webcomic Glutton
- Location
- Texas
If Brian was healthy and stable, would Aisha leave to track down Alec?
That's the only question that helps me understand that Aisha really might attack Tori like this.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The real attacker is someone who shipped Aisha with Alec and/or Flechette with Parian. This story was a self-insert all along.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Yes, the attacker was definitely an Aisha/Alec shipper.
Supernova 5.12
Three to seven minutes. That's how long it takes most people to pass out from blood loss. Three to seven minutes. One hundred and eighty to four hundred and twenty seconds.
Exactly where in that range it falls, if not outside it, varies by a number of factors. The victim's health, the location and severity of the wound, sometimes even the ambient conditions. If someone gets unlucky enough to be struck in a major artery then their time is measured in seconds. It takes longer to fatally bleed out than to pass out, too. Consciousness is a major drain on the body's resources and the brain is a hungry thing; there's a large gap between what it needs to stay awake and what it can survive. But once you're down, your part in whether you live or die is over.
The shock is what sets in first. People often mistake being stabbed for being punched if they're not used to either. A stab wound is still something hitting you, and your nerves aren't all that good at telling the difference between a pair of knuckles slamming into them with bruising force and a narrow blade breaking the skin in the split-second of impact. Pain, in the instant you feel it, is pain. Distinguishing what kind takes practice most people would rather avoid.
No, what really clues people in is the after effects. The hot sticky liquid running down their side. Tacky and warm as it stains their shirt and coats the palm of their hand like paint. The smell of a freshly rubbed penny. Even as their breath shortens and their chest tightens, they notice more of that liquid spilling out of them.
The senses go next. Hearing begins to fade, a combination of shock setting in and the brain prioritizing vital functions. The skin becomes cold and clammy as blood loss effectively begins to deaden the nerves on most of the epidermis. The eyes dilate, pupils expanding to swallow the iris whole.
Then comes the pain. Hot pins and needles in their sides, tickling up their ribs and caressing them from behind like the embrace of a lover. They try to breathe but that just speeds up the process as damaged cells cry out for oxygen, glucose, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The sensation sharpens, pins changing to knives as their brain frantically tries to warn of the danger, sending adrenaline and norepinephrine coursing through their veins. It's enough to dull the feeling for a moment.
Finally, there's the loss of muscle control. Their legs give out, sometimes so quickly they don't realize what's happened. People will fall down while running, standing, even mid-sentence. Sometimes they'll stay upright and unaware right up to this moment, only realizing that it's worse than a bruise when their body gives them no choice. Victims have described sitting down and suddenly lacking the strength to stand back up, feeling dull surprise mixed with helpless fear as their body betrays them. Their vision slowly grays out, shrinks, darkens. And that's it.
Three to seven minutes.
Without thinking, my aura lashed out. The wave of fear-terror-anxiety-panic-run blasted off my skin like a bomb going off. There was no time to consider what it would do to Skitter, to Charlotte or Forrest, to the crowd–
There was no time.
The wound was a hot bright point of pain just under my right shoulder blade. I could feel the blood trickling down my side, could barely focus through the pangs of agony radiating out from it. The people in front of me were screaming. Skitter was frozen in place beside me, rigid with tension as her bugs swept the surroundings, the crowd, the rooftops. Looking for a sniper, probably. Assuming an attacker at range. I barely registered the crowd beginning to turn on itself in panic as I stumbled forward, away from the source of the pain.
What had happened? I hadn't sensed anything wrong with the crowd or on our patrol until now. Was this another gang? A rogue member of the Protectorate? A final bit of delayed revenge from Coil?
I bit my lip.
Fuck. No time. I had to go with my gut.
"Th-threat," I bit out from between clenched teeth. "Near. B-behind." I had to trust she'd understand that. My fingers were already numb and tingly from the long day of signing, I definitely didn't trust them now.
Skitter's swarm flooded down from the rooftops and in from the crowd like the sea through a breaching dam. It descended, a nightmare of black buzzing fury, the sound deafening even to me as the mass of insects pressed in. Within seconds, the crowd was enclosed in a writhing curtain of hornets, bees and beetles. Centipedes and ants scurried across the floor, forming battle lines and climbing up every limb they could find. Spiders spun silk by the yard, nailing anything they could reach to the ground and forming tripwires and lassos where they couldn't.
The screaming got louder. The brewing stampede stopped dead.
"What's the threat?" Skitter's voice was tight. Controlled. Thank god we'd practiced exposing her to my aura. But it didn't change the fact that we were fucked.
I'd just been seriously injured – I didn't even know how badly – by someone who'd succeeded in getting within inches of me. They'd managed this at a public event, through bug cordons set up for a high-risk public appearance. And Skitter still hadn't seen anything. There was only one answer I could give.
"St-t-ranger."
It wasn't the only possible answer. While Skitter's multitasking ability was superhuman, her reactions weren't. Flechette had proven that. If someone was acting from outside her range, if her bugs weren't in the right place, if she didn't see a threat for what it was until it was too late…
Any of those things could get through her screen. But a hostile Stranger within melee distance was easily the most dangerous of those options. So it was the one we had to eliminate first.
Skitter didn't hesitate for an instant. The swarm pulled in tighter around us, cutting off escape routes and closing off potential exits. She stepped in close next to me, turning to put us back to back, trusting me to defend her even injured as I was. I tried not to react to that. The slower my heartbeat, the longer I had.
The crowd wasn't reacting well. Nobody reacted well to being penned in by a biblical plague. The screams were just barely audible over the buzzing din, but Skitter wasn't concerned with optics and I'd admit I felt the same.
My back was still throbbing. I knew enough that I could tell it was worse than a bruise, but not how much worse. It didn't feel like a bullet, either. I'd been shot before, and it wasn't an experience I was ever going to forget, much as I wished I could. This felt different, and I was pretty sure I'd have heard a gunshot.
So. Probably a knife or something. I was bleeding, but my head was still clear enough to think, for now. I grit my teeth against the pain and panned across the crowd, ignoring the sharp, stabbing twinges that came with every movement.
The faces that looked back at me were a blurred mess of confusion, fear, panic, and anger. I blinked quickly, biting down on my lower lip. Fuck, the edges of my vision were starting to darken. Was that shock? Panic? Blood loss? I didn't dare to ask Skitter to look at my back and risk distracting her at a critical moment. Wait, did that even work like that? Her bugs could see everything at once. Could she–
A weight I hadn't noticed slipped free from where it had been pulling my hoodie taut over my injured shoulder, and something clattered to the asphalt behind me. I turned, but Skitter's voice dragged my attention to her, rather than whatever had fallen.
"Imp."
I followed her gaze to the familiar gray scarf and white on red mask, and a wave of relief swept over me. I had no idea why the girl was here, but I wasn't going to argue with extra backup.
"D-danger close," I stuttered between clenched teeth. I took a step closer. Our formation would be stronger if we had three people to cover each other's backs while we got a handle on–
Skitter's outstretched arm stopped me midstep. I turned to look at her, and my chest froze. The swarm was writhing, insects aborting flight paths millimeters away from impact. The hornets and ants in her hair were vibrating so intensely that it was difficult to tell where they ended and her black locks started.
It was the angriest I'd ever seen her.
"Squash A." Skitter's words were clipped. Dead. Barely on the edge of violence.
Imp's fist clenched. Her blood red fist. And suddenly I understood.
"Apple A, cunt."
Fuck. I couldn't look at Skitter to confirm, it was too dangerous. If I took my eyes off what was in front of me for a moment, it might all be over. But I didn't need to. Imp's callsign, red hand and empty toolbelt spoke for her.
As did her knife in my back.
I looked down, already knowing what I'd see. There it was. Lying at Skitter's feet, blade wet with blood. My blood. There were bugs on it already; she'd felt it before I had, but she took her eyes off Imp for a second to look down at it. I couldn't see her expression under her mask, but I didn't need to.
The swarm pulled in even closer, reducing visibility to barely ten feet. Close enough for the three of us to see one another, but cut off from the rest of the crowd. A small mercy as my brain frantically raced to put the pieces together.
Imp had stabbed me in the back. Whether or not she'd meant to kill me or knew my shield was down was irrelevant. She'd done it. That alone would've been a problem, given she'd done it in front of hundreds of people. But our real crisis was that she'd just confirmed she wasn't being mind controlled. Well, probably not. She'd responded to Skitter's callsign, and was still treating the two of us as enemies. So either we were dealing with a Master who could turn her against us while leaving her with enough free will to use what she knew, or we'd missed something…
"What's going on?" My signs were jerky, imprecise, stuttering over themselves. But my throat was too tightdryangryweakhurt to say anything. I was swaying already. I could feel my hoodie sticking to my back, wet and tacky. The hot trickle tracing down my side had reached my hip, and was soaking into my pants.
"What's happening? What am I doing?" Imp mocked. I could feel the glare behind black reflective lenses. "Don't you already know?"
"What are you talking about?" Skitter said, taking a step forward to put herself between us. "You just stabbed To-Victoria, Imp. Explain yourself, or–"
"Or what?" she snapped, and turned her glare back on me. "You want an explanation? Sure. What was it you said? 'I want to help all of you to get what you want?'" She scoffed. "Well I guess that only counts for the people you actually give a shit about, huh?"
The swarm clenched in on her, but I grabbed Skitter's arm and she stopped. There was a split-second of disorientated confusion that I almost put down to blood loss, but Skitter jerked as well. Imp must have activated her power. And then deactivated it again as soon as the bugs drew back.
That... that meant something. That she wasn't just making us forget her and running off. She wanted to talk. Wanted us to know why. I raced through possibilities in my head, leaning on Skitter with my good arm. My good arm on her good shoulder. No, fuck, shut up. No time to get distracted with stupid associations. I had to focus.
The people I gave a shit about, she'd said. Was that something to do with my family? No, that wouldn't make sense; even if she knew what had happened on our visit, there was no reason for her to stab me anywhere in it. Someone in her life then. Her territory? But that didn't make sense either. She'd been in Alec and Brian's territory more than her own; she didn't care about governing and we all knew it.
Which meant someone in the Undersiders. I'd met with all of them, though, and while the meetings hadn't all gone how I'd wanted, none would have justified this.
My ears were ringing. Sounds came through muffled, like I was hearing through a pane of glass. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, fast and scared, and every beat made the knife wound on my back burn red hot and ice cold at the same time.
"Tell me what you mean," I signed at last. Thinking about this on my own was likely what had gotten me into this mess to begin with. And I didn't have the time to figure it out myself. My hands were shaking almost too badly to form the words. Skitter shifted closer as I took my hand off her shoulder, letting me lean into her and taking some of my weight. I didn't want to admit how badly I needed it.
Imp shook her head. "You're really gonna go with that, huh?" Her voice was just above a snarl.
"I don't know what you're–"
"What did you even talk to him about when you met?"
I blinked. Skitter hadn't had time to translate. Since when did Aisha know sign language? Whatever, I'd figure that out later. By the gentle fluttering on my ear, Skitter had picked up the same thing, because she didn't step in to verbalize.
"We talked about his power. About how he'd need to use it on people going forward. What his lines were." I tried to keep my own feelings on the matter off my face as much as I could. The sheer visceral disgust when I realized that Alec had been speaking through other people to greet me. Like a sick parody of what Amy had done to me.
Imp let out a bitter laugh. "Oh yeah? Just that?"
I frowned. That had been a fairly comprehensive conversation. Granted, it wasn't the last time we'd go over the issues, but I thought we'd covered–
"So when were you going to talk about him being Heartbreaker's kid?"
Just like that, the world dropped out from under me. If I wasn't looking straight at her, I'd have thought Aisha had stabbed me again. Maybe in the spine this time. Every single one of my nerves was lit up, oversensitive and firing nonstop. How many had he touched. How many had he violated? How long had I been alone with one of Heartbreaker's kids and not even known–
There wasn't a word for the noise that came out of my throat. All I knew was that it hurt.
"Fuck," Skitter's voice sounded distantly. There was more noise. Movement. Bugs. People. I saw it through teary eyes and clenched teeth. How had this… how had I missed this? How had Taylor missed this? Because there was no way she would've let me meet alone with him if she'd known, right? I couldn't, wouldn't believe that. Had he been playing a long game? Toying with all of us? Had he already gotten his hooks into Aisha?
Warm metal on my tongue.
"D-d-diddddn't-t kn-o-o-o-w."
"Oh, well, that's just perfect then," Imp shot back. Hateful sarcasm dripped from every syllable. "She didn't know. Fucking fantastic. I guess that makes everything okay. You know, now that he's gone."
"Gone?" Skitter asked after a long pause. I was glad she'd said something, because I was about out of words for the day. Week. Month. I sagged into her shoulder, blinking stupidly, trying to breathe.
"Yeah," Imp bit out, the tension building in her tone like a pressure cooker. "Barbie over here drove him away. He left a note. He's been gone for days, and he's not coming back."
"Are you sure it's not–"
"Of course I am!" Aisha screamed, and ripped her mask off. The heat in her eyes could've melted steel. "You think I wouldn't know? You think I would just give up, that I would be here if I wasn't sure that bitch drove him off forever?"
I swallowed back something bitter and ugly. My back throbbed. I didn't turn to look at Skitter. The buzz grew louder.
"And you stabbed her over it?" she asked flatly.
Aisha laughed, short and savage. "How was I supposed to know that ditzy daisy over here didn't have her stupid little forcefield up? Though…" she paused and looked at me. "...you know, I can't really say I'm sorry."
"You're what." The last time I'd heard that tone in Skitter's voice, she'd followed up by trying to shoot someone. I didn't think I had it in me to try to stop her this time.
"You heard me." Aisha's voice trembled on the edge of breaking. "Maybe now she'll know what it feels like." She paused and looked at me again. Her eyes were hard. "I almost trusted you, you know. Bought into your whole bullshit about heroes and villains and all that. Shows what a fucking dumbass I still am."
I blinked until the dark patches in my vision receded. Not much time left. "I'm s-sorry."
"Save it," Aisha said flatly. "I'm done."
She looked at us for another long moment, before she started walking back towards the edge of the swarm. Immediately the wall of bugs pressed in closer, a buzz saw of brown and black chitin. "Aisha–"
"Fuck off, Skitter!" She stopped in place, leaving her back to us. "I'm not sorry. You're mad. Whatever. You stabbed the team in the back way before I did, and you expected them to just take you back no questions asked. I'm not gonna go after her again, and you still need me too much to swarm me. So we leave it there. I'm not leaving the Undersiders, I care too much about Brian for that. Seems like I have to, since you two clearly don't."
She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes glimmered.
"But I'm done doing you any favors."
And then we were alone in a cloud of bugs.
A/N:
Yes, it was a literal stabbing. I'd never bait you guys with something like that. I'm mean, but I'm not cruel. Maybe. I think. Hey why are all the betas giving me that look?
This chapter was hard to write in a lot of ways. Frankly most of them feel that way more and more often. It feels like they're all being tugged in so many directions it can be difficult to imagine what any of them would say in a particular scene. So many options. I'm really looking forward to the break between this book and the next. Not just for my own sake, but also to "decouple" my thoughts and expectations from what I've built them up to here. Ah well, I'm just rambling now. The next chapter isn't written yet (which terrifies me) but I'll try to have it ready by Friday.
Today's rec is going to be The Artist Formerly Known as Bonesaw, by Octobre. Riley gets thrown back in time to when she was still Bonesaw with the Nine, and promptly has an existential crisis. Does Jack know? Is she still irredeemable because of what she's done? Can she even claim ownership of anything "Bonesaw" did in this reality? What does she do next? It's messy and complicated in the best of ways.
Exactly where in that range it falls, if not outside it, varies by a number of factors. The victim's health, the location and severity of the wound, sometimes even the ambient conditions. If someone gets unlucky enough to be struck in a major artery then their time is measured in seconds. It takes longer to fatally bleed out than to pass out, too. Consciousness is a major drain on the body's resources and the brain is a hungry thing; there's a large gap between what it needs to stay awake and what it can survive. But once you're down, your part in whether you live or die is over.
The shock is what sets in first. People often mistake being stabbed for being punched if they're not used to either. A stab wound is still something hitting you, and your nerves aren't all that good at telling the difference between a pair of knuckles slamming into them with bruising force and a narrow blade breaking the skin in the split-second of impact. Pain, in the instant you feel it, is pain. Distinguishing what kind takes practice most people would rather avoid.
No, what really clues people in is the after effects. The hot sticky liquid running down their side. Tacky and warm as it stains their shirt and coats the palm of their hand like paint. The smell of a freshly rubbed penny. Even as their breath shortens and their chest tightens, they notice more of that liquid spilling out of them.
The senses go next. Hearing begins to fade, a combination of shock setting in and the brain prioritizing vital functions. The skin becomes cold and clammy as blood loss effectively begins to deaden the nerves on most of the epidermis. The eyes dilate, pupils expanding to swallow the iris whole.
Then comes the pain. Hot pins and needles in their sides, tickling up their ribs and caressing them from behind like the embrace of a lover. They try to breathe but that just speeds up the process as damaged cells cry out for oxygen, glucose, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The sensation sharpens, pins changing to knives as their brain frantically tries to warn of the danger, sending adrenaline and norepinephrine coursing through their veins. It's enough to dull the feeling for a moment.
Finally, there's the loss of muscle control. Their legs give out, sometimes so quickly they don't realize what's happened. People will fall down while running, standing, even mid-sentence. Sometimes they'll stay upright and unaware right up to this moment, only realizing that it's worse than a bruise when their body gives them no choice. Victims have described sitting down and suddenly lacking the strength to stand back up, feeling dull surprise mixed with helpless fear as their body betrays them. Their vision slowly grays out, shrinks, darkens. And that's it.
Three to seven minutes.
Without thinking, my aura lashed out. The wave of fear-terror-anxiety-panic-run blasted off my skin like a bomb going off. There was no time to consider what it would do to Skitter, to Charlotte or Forrest, to the crowd–
There was no time.
The wound was a hot bright point of pain just under my right shoulder blade. I could feel the blood trickling down my side, could barely focus through the pangs of agony radiating out from it. The people in front of me were screaming. Skitter was frozen in place beside me, rigid with tension as her bugs swept the surroundings, the crowd, the rooftops. Looking for a sniper, probably. Assuming an attacker at range. I barely registered the crowd beginning to turn on itself in panic as I stumbled forward, away from the source of the pain.
What had happened? I hadn't sensed anything wrong with the crowd or on our patrol until now. Was this another gang? A rogue member of the Protectorate? A final bit of delayed revenge from Coil?
I bit my lip.
Fuck. No time. I had to go with my gut.
"Th-threat," I bit out from between clenched teeth. "Near. B-behind." I had to trust she'd understand that. My fingers were already numb and tingly from the long day of signing, I definitely didn't trust them now.
Skitter's swarm flooded down from the rooftops and in from the crowd like the sea through a breaching dam. It descended, a nightmare of black buzzing fury, the sound deafening even to me as the mass of insects pressed in. Within seconds, the crowd was enclosed in a writhing curtain of hornets, bees and beetles. Centipedes and ants scurried across the floor, forming battle lines and climbing up every limb they could find. Spiders spun silk by the yard, nailing anything they could reach to the ground and forming tripwires and lassos where they couldn't.
The screaming got louder. The brewing stampede stopped dead.
"What's the threat?" Skitter's voice was tight. Controlled. Thank god we'd practiced exposing her to my aura. But it didn't change the fact that we were fucked.
I'd just been seriously injured – I didn't even know how badly – by someone who'd succeeded in getting within inches of me. They'd managed this at a public event, through bug cordons set up for a high-risk public appearance. And Skitter still hadn't seen anything. There was only one answer I could give.
"St-t-ranger."
It wasn't the only possible answer. While Skitter's multitasking ability was superhuman, her reactions weren't. Flechette had proven that. If someone was acting from outside her range, if her bugs weren't in the right place, if she didn't see a threat for what it was until it was too late…
Any of those things could get through her screen. But a hostile Stranger within melee distance was easily the most dangerous of those options. So it was the one we had to eliminate first.
Skitter didn't hesitate for an instant. The swarm pulled in tighter around us, cutting off escape routes and closing off potential exits. She stepped in close next to me, turning to put us back to back, trusting me to defend her even injured as I was. I tried not to react to that. The slower my heartbeat, the longer I had.
The crowd wasn't reacting well. Nobody reacted well to being penned in by a biblical plague. The screams were just barely audible over the buzzing din, but Skitter wasn't concerned with optics and I'd admit I felt the same.
My back was still throbbing. I knew enough that I could tell it was worse than a bruise, but not how much worse. It didn't feel like a bullet, either. I'd been shot before, and it wasn't an experience I was ever going to forget, much as I wished I could. This felt different, and I was pretty sure I'd have heard a gunshot.
So. Probably a knife or something. I was bleeding, but my head was still clear enough to think, for now. I grit my teeth against the pain and panned across the crowd, ignoring the sharp, stabbing twinges that came with every movement.
The faces that looked back at me were a blurred mess of confusion, fear, panic, and anger. I blinked quickly, biting down on my lower lip. Fuck, the edges of my vision were starting to darken. Was that shock? Panic? Blood loss? I didn't dare to ask Skitter to look at my back and risk distracting her at a critical moment. Wait, did that even work like that? Her bugs could see everything at once. Could she–
A weight I hadn't noticed slipped free from where it had been pulling my hoodie taut over my injured shoulder, and something clattered to the asphalt behind me. I turned, but Skitter's voice dragged my attention to her, rather than whatever had fallen.
"Imp."
I followed her gaze to the familiar gray scarf and white on red mask, and a wave of relief swept over me. I had no idea why the girl was here, but I wasn't going to argue with extra backup.
"D-danger close," I stuttered between clenched teeth. I took a step closer. Our formation would be stronger if we had three people to cover each other's backs while we got a handle on–
Skitter's outstretched arm stopped me midstep. I turned to look at her, and my chest froze. The swarm was writhing, insects aborting flight paths millimeters away from impact. The hornets and ants in her hair were vibrating so intensely that it was difficult to tell where they ended and her black locks started.
It was the angriest I'd ever seen her.
"Squash A." Skitter's words were clipped. Dead. Barely on the edge of violence.
Imp's fist clenched. Her blood red fist. And suddenly I understood.
"Apple A, cunt."
Fuck. I couldn't look at Skitter to confirm, it was too dangerous. If I took my eyes off what was in front of me for a moment, it might all be over. But I didn't need to. Imp's callsign, red hand and empty toolbelt spoke for her.
As did her knife in my back.
I looked down, already knowing what I'd see. There it was. Lying at Skitter's feet, blade wet with blood. My blood. There were bugs on it already; she'd felt it before I had, but she took her eyes off Imp for a second to look down at it. I couldn't see her expression under her mask, but I didn't need to.
The swarm pulled in even closer, reducing visibility to barely ten feet. Close enough for the three of us to see one another, but cut off from the rest of the crowd. A small mercy as my brain frantically raced to put the pieces together.
Imp had stabbed me in the back. Whether or not she'd meant to kill me or knew my shield was down was irrelevant. She'd done it. That alone would've been a problem, given she'd done it in front of hundreds of people. But our real crisis was that she'd just confirmed she wasn't being mind controlled. Well, probably not. She'd responded to Skitter's callsign, and was still treating the two of us as enemies. So either we were dealing with a Master who could turn her against us while leaving her with enough free will to use what she knew, or we'd missed something…
"What's going on?" My signs were jerky, imprecise, stuttering over themselves. But my throat was too tightdryangryweakhurt to say anything. I was swaying already. I could feel my hoodie sticking to my back, wet and tacky. The hot trickle tracing down my side had reached my hip, and was soaking into my pants.
"What's happening? What am I doing?" Imp mocked. I could feel the glare behind black reflective lenses. "Don't you already know?"
"What are you talking about?" Skitter said, taking a step forward to put herself between us. "You just stabbed To-Victoria, Imp. Explain yourself, or–"
"Or what?" she snapped, and turned her glare back on me. "You want an explanation? Sure. What was it you said? 'I want to help all of you to get what you want?'" She scoffed. "Well I guess that only counts for the people you actually give a shit about, huh?"
The swarm clenched in on her, but I grabbed Skitter's arm and she stopped. There was a split-second of disorientated confusion that I almost put down to blood loss, but Skitter jerked as well. Imp must have activated her power. And then deactivated it again as soon as the bugs drew back.
That... that meant something. That she wasn't just making us forget her and running off. She wanted to talk. Wanted us to know why. I raced through possibilities in my head, leaning on Skitter with my good arm. My good arm on her good shoulder. No, fuck, shut up. No time to get distracted with stupid associations. I had to focus.
The people I gave a shit about, she'd said. Was that something to do with my family? No, that wouldn't make sense; even if she knew what had happened on our visit, there was no reason for her to stab me anywhere in it. Someone in her life then. Her territory? But that didn't make sense either. She'd been in Alec and Brian's territory more than her own; she didn't care about governing and we all knew it.
Which meant someone in the Undersiders. I'd met with all of them, though, and while the meetings hadn't all gone how I'd wanted, none would have justified this.
My ears were ringing. Sounds came through muffled, like I was hearing through a pane of glass. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, fast and scared, and every beat made the knife wound on my back burn red hot and ice cold at the same time.
"Tell me what you mean," I signed at last. Thinking about this on my own was likely what had gotten me into this mess to begin with. And I didn't have the time to figure it out myself. My hands were shaking almost too badly to form the words. Skitter shifted closer as I took my hand off her shoulder, letting me lean into her and taking some of my weight. I didn't want to admit how badly I needed it.
Imp shook her head. "You're really gonna go with that, huh?" Her voice was just above a snarl.
"I don't know what you're–"
"What did you even talk to him about when you met?"
I blinked. Skitter hadn't had time to translate. Since when did Aisha know sign language? Whatever, I'd figure that out later. By the gentle fluttering on my ear, Skitter had picked up the same thing, because she didn't step in to verbalize.
"We talked about his power. About how he'd need to use it on people going forward. What his lines were." I tried to keep my own feelings on the matter off my face as much as I could. The sheer visceral disgust when I realized that Alec had been speaking through other people to greet me. Like a sick parody of what Amy had done to me.
Imp let out a bitter laugh. "Oh yeah? Just that?"
I frowned. That had been a fairly comprehensive conversation. Granted, it wasn't the last time we'd go over the issues, but I thought we'd covered–
"So when were you going to talk about him being Heartbreaker's kid?"
Just like that, the world dropped out from under me. If I wasn't looking straight at her, I'd have thought Aisha had stabbed me again. Maybe in the spine this time. Every single one of my nerves was lit up, oversensitive and firing nonstop. How many had he touched. How many had he violated? How long had I been alone with one of Heartbreaker's kids and not even known–
There wasn't a word for the noise that came out of my throat. All I knew was that it hurt.
"Fuck," Skitter's voice sounded distantly. There was more noise. Movement. Bugs. People. I saw it through teary eyes and clenched teeth. How had this… how had I missed this? How had Taylor missed this? Because there was no way she would've let me meet alone with him if she'd known, right? I couldn't, wouldn't believe that. Had he been playing a long game? Toying with all of us? Had he already gotten his hooks into Aisha?
Warm metal on my tongue.
"D-d-diddddn't-t kn-o-o-o-w."
"Oh, well, that's just perfect then," Imp shot back. Hateful sarcasm dripped from every syllable. "She didn't know. Fucking fantastic. I guess that makes everything okay. You know, now that he's gone."
"Gone?" Skitter asked after a long pause. I was glad she'd said something, because I was about out of words for the day. Week. Month. I sagged into her shoulder, blinking stupidly, trying to breathe.
"Yeah," Imp bit out, the tension building in her tone like a pressure cooker. "Barbie over here drove him away. He left a note. He's been gone for days, and he's not coming back."
"Are you sure it's not–"
"Of course I am!" Aisha screamed, and ripped her mask off. The heat in her eyes could've melted steel. "You think I wouldn't know? You think I would just give up, that I would be here if I wasn't sure that bitch drove him off forever?"
I swallowed back something bitter and ugly. My back throbbed. I didn't turn to look at Skitter. The buzz grew louder.
"And you stabbed her over it?" she asked flatly.
Aisha laughed, short and savage. "How was I supposed to know that ditzy daisy over here didn't have her stupid little forcefield up? Though…" she paused and looked at me. "...you know, I can't really say I'm sorry."
"You're what." The last time I'd heard that tone in Skitter's voice, she'd followed up by trying to shoot someone. I didn't think I had it in me to try to stop her this time.
"You heard me." Aisha's voice trembled on the edge of breaking. "Maybe now she'll know what it feels like." She paused and looked at me again. Her eyes were hard. "I almost trusted you, you know. Bought into your whole bullshit about heroes and villains and all that. Shows what a fucking dumbass I still am."
I blinked until the dark patches in my vision receded. Not much time left. "I'm s-sorry."
"Save it," Aisha said flatly. "I'm done."
She looked at us for another long moment, before she started walking back towards the edge of the swarm. Immediately the wall of bugs pressed in closer, a buzz saw of brown and black chitin. "Aisha–"
"Fuck off, Skitter!" She stopped in place, leaving her back to us. "I'm not sorry. You're mad. Whatever. You stabbed the team in the back way before I did, and you expected them to just take you back no questions asked. I'm not gonna go after her again, and you still need me too much to swarm me. So we leave it there. I'm not leaving the Undersiders, I care too much about Brian for that. Seems like I have to, since you two clearly don't."
She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes glimmered.
"But I'm done doing you any favors."
And then we were alone in a cloud of bugs.
A/N:
Yes, it was a literal stabbing. I'd never bait you guys with something like that. I'm mean, but I'm not cruel. Maybe. I think. Hey why are all the betas giving me that look?
This chapter was hard to write in a lot of ways. Frankly most of them feel that way more and more often. It feels like they're all being tugged in so many directions it can be difficult to imagine what any of them would say in a particular scene. So many options. I'm really looking forward to the break between this book and the next. Not just for my own sake, but also to "decouple" my thoughts and expectations from what I've built them up to here. Ah well, I'm just rambling now. The next chapter isn't written yet (which terrifies me) but I'll try to have it ready by Friday.
Today's rec is going to be The Artist Formerly Known as Bonesaw, by Octobre. Riley gets thrown back in time to when she was still Bonesaw with the Nine, and promptly has an existential crisis. Does Jack know? Is she still irredeemable because of what she's done? Can she even claim ownership of anything "Bonesaw" did in this reality? What does she do next? It's messy and complicated in the best of ways.
hugh_donnetono
No use to complain
- Location
- Caught Out In The Rain
is this aisha being intentionally difficult because apples can be green, red, or yellow
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
So... I'm guessing this is going to peel Taylor away from the Undersiders rather than Tori away from Worm's facade-based concept of heroism as I'd previously expected.
RadiantPhoenix
Trudging up the Hill
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Or the Laborns away from the other Undersiders.
YuffieK
(Verified Ninja Princess)
Or Conflict Drives subtly pushing everyone into making sure nobody can have nice things. Co-operation is bad! Only Fighting gives best [DATA]! Rrar!