It’s Wormerin’ time!

So! Last time, the first major ambush on the Nine was a success, but in the process of executing Plan B, the Undertravelers left Grue behind on a rooftop after his impatience made him choose to fall from a fairly high altitude. It’s likely that impatience is why he wound up (according to Cherish, who might have something to gain from lying) being captured.

Of course, the Undertravelers can’t have Grue getting Bonesawed or Siberian’d or… pretty-much-any-member-of-the-Nine’d. So now the next goal is to rescue him as soon as possible, and also figure out how to use Shatterbird and Cherish to their advantage when Cherish has told the other Nine about Regent. Of course, even if they fail to do that, just having them out of the fight is a benefit.

Y’know, in a sense, the victory last chapter can be partially tied back to the same event that earned Tattletale her glasgow smile. If she hadn’t tried to mess with Jack by alerting him to Cherish’s betrayal, she wouldn’t have been in the position where she’d want to make a deal with the locals. Yet. And that’s a major reason the Undertravelers are still alive, so hey, at least her backfiring attempt wasn’t entirely in vain.

Enough about last chapter, though – what are we in for this time?

Time is of the essence for the Undertravelers, so to convey the speed of events, I suspect we (the readers, not the characters) might skip the planning this time and go straight to the attempt to rescue Grue. Maybe. It’s also possible we’ll be hanging out at Coil’s base a bit first, hopefully learning about what happened to Imp.

Whether it’s this chapter or not, the mission to save Grue is probably going to go well. I doubt Wildbow would kill him off-screen between chapters if at all, although doing it that way might be worth it for the angst of Taylor being faced with a Bonesawed husk of his former self when they come to rescue him. Damn, that’d be dark.

So yeah, without further ado, I wanna read!