Brooks and I hauled Minor over, and I waited while he climbed down, since I was already fairly secure where I was.

Oh, okay, we’re getting everyone over this time. Fair enough!

Skidmark was losing.  It was obvious from where I sat, and I could see his changing expression as he saw Mush collapse beneath Gregor’s sludge and realized he had no friends left.

Good. I want to see the Merchants lose.

Hey, maybe you could’ve gotten somewhere if you hadn’t had a large portion of your mundane muscle beat and/or kill each other right before this!

Gregor, Labyrinth, Faultline and the red-haired woman were all in action, and Skidmark was pretty much alone at this point.

Excellent.

I hadn’t seen Newter or Spitfire, and I couldn’t be sure if he was okay or not.

Yeah, Spitfire hasn’t showed up at all. Maybe she has a stealthier task? Although I think my working hypothesis last session was that she’s the one staying behind with Labyrinth to make sure she sticks to the plan.

Sure, the Merchants could have hit him with weapons rather than their bare hands, but he was quick, he had his tail, and he only needed to touch someone to drug them out of their minds.

Not to mention his wall and roof crawling ability. Or the fact he can spit at those too far away for touching.

Yeah, Newter’s fairly capable of defending himself.

Spitfire might be the one babysitting Labyrinth somewhere out of the way.

Yeah.

In fact, Spitfire being the one to take care of Labyrinth is probably a standard thing for the Crew. They did share a room.

Hm, I wonder if Palanquin survived Leviathan.

A knotted bandage tied around Bryce’s good arm was thrown up to me, and I used it to draw his arm up while the others managed his lower body.  Once I had his wrist, I gripped it firmly in one hand, my upper body hugging the top of the wall to keep myself from being pulled off.

This seems like a solid way to do it.

Minor gave Brooks a boost and the medic straddled the wall facing me.  We worked together to raise the unconscious boy over the top of the wall and pass him down to where the others waited.

I do wonder how much remote awareness Labyrinth has of what happens inside the area she’s affecting. For instance, would she have seen the arrows Taylor made out of bugs and maybe recognized Skitter’s presence?

I glanced back towards the fight.  Faultline had emerged from beneath the platform and moved around to the side, and using her power to draw hand holds into the side of the platform.

One thing I love about Worm is how creative just about everyone gets with their powers.

The cape who’d been aiming at her with the gun stooped over the hole she’d dropped into and looked down to see if she was still down there.

“Anybody home?”

He was oblivious as she hauled herself over the edge of the platform and attacked him from behind, striking him with one elbow, then reversing the turn of her body to sweep his legs out from under him with one extended leg.

w h o o p

I guess this is why she went into the hole in the first place instead of just destroying the gun.

Then again, this was one of the capes… What’s his power?

The sweep of her foot had apparently coincided with a use of her power, because there was a cloud of stone dust as he collapsed onto broken, uneven ground.

Nice.

From my angle I couldn’t see for sure, but I thought maybe he’d fallen head first into the hole she’d first descended into.

Faultline: *scribbles a “2” onto her golf card*

Gregor was keeping up his steady pressure, alternating between blasting Trainwreck and blasting Mush with one hand and aiming at Skidmark with the other.

Damn, Gregor, taking on three at once!

Skidmark used his power to push away the worst of the slime, but it was clear he was losing.  His power wasn’t strong, it didn’t have much more push to it than a strong wind.

Unless layered, of course.

Any attempt to get it as effective as it had been at the edge of the arena took time and multiple layers of the effect.

Yeah.

In short, Gregor could make the slime more easily than Skidmark could get rid of it.

Good job, Gregor. 🙂

My bugs told me we were close to Lisa, Charlotte, Jaw and Senegal.  I caught Minor’s attention and pointed, and he put Bryce down long enough to give me a boost up to the top of the wall that stood between us.

Nice.

I straddled the wall and waited for Brooks and Minor to figure out how to get Bryce up to me so I could pass him down to the others.

Hm. Any particular reason you want to do this? Just so you can have only one or two people taking the long way around?

From my vantage point, I could see more of the battle unfolding on the far side of the mall.

One powered Merchant charged Faultline and collapsed through the ground she had strategically weakened.

Huh, that’s a neat use of her power.

She kicked him several times in the face before the next member of Skidmark’s group tried to take her on, drawing and pointing a gun.

The great equalizer… but Faultline can just cut it in half, can’t she?

Faultline drew her feet apart, and then dropped through the floor of the platform in a spray of splinters.

…alright. Won’t that just put her next to the first Merchant cape, though?

To her right, the red-headed woman was striding towards Scrub.  He aimed a shot and missed by a fraction, and she didn’t even flinch.

Badass.

Another try, another miss.  As she got close, he let his power go haywire, and a dozen flashes erupted in close vicinity to him.  None touched her.

This seems to be far more than just agility.

She had her gun drawn, but she didn’t shoot him.  Instead, she grabbed him by the collar, then wrenched him to one side so he tipped over the side of the platform and fell the twenty or so feet to the ground below.

See ya.

It wasn’t enough of a fall to guarantee that he was out of the fight, but she seemed confident enough to turn away and move on to the next target before he’d even finished falling.

Out of the fight or not, it’s going to take him a little bit of time to get back up, and his range seems to be relatively short. 15 feet, maybe?

It’s worth noting that he does seem to be getting better at controlling it now.

From what I could gather, he needed some kind of loose matter to form the body of his other self.

Oh… Less Weld, more dual self. It sounds like he can make a trash copy of himself and maybe control both bodies like a hivemind.

Dirt, compost, trash, maybe even sand.  Problem was, however fantastic his surroundings might have been for this five minutes ago, Labyrinth was screwing him over by cleaning things up, maybe inadvertently.

Neat!

One upper arm, his naked upper body and his nearly bald head were all exposed and vulnerable.

Sounds good to me.

Scrub had climbed up to one corner of the platform, and was keeping to the edge of the fight.  His intent was clearly to be close enough to Faultline’s group to possibly tag them, but not so close that one of his uncontrolled blasts would catch a fellow Merchant.

Yeah, Scrub is going to be incredibly dangerous to go up against when he gets control of his power, but for now he needs to move tactically to make sure he hits the right people.

Alright, let’s get back into it!

The battle was still ongoing.  Gregor the Snail was here, but unlike the others, he wasn’t operating in Labyrinth’s world.  He passed through the walls of the maze, spraying streams of slime at Trainwreck, who had apparently advanced halfway up the stairs by using his hands to help him walk.

Oh. So Labyrinth does have the power to pick and choose who’s affected by her changes. She just hadn’t set Faultline to pass through it for some reason.

Trainwreck retaliated by throwing a chunk of stairs at Gregor with one hand while trying to block the stream of slime with the other.

But do those stairs exist for Gregor?

The section of stairs hit the wall of the maze just in front of Gregor, some of it bouncing over to pass through Gregor.  Not real, as far as he was concerned.

Nope. Judging by Hive, he couldn’t even see what Trainwreck thought he was throwing.

What did this look like to Gregor?  Was he standing in the mall as it had been, while Trainwreck seemed to stand on thin air?  Or was Trainwreck on the ground?  I couldn’t parse it.

If I remember correctly, Oni Lee seemed to stand on thin air while affected by Labyrinth’s power… then again, he also teleported and promptly fell down. Was Labyrinth toggling whether the power worked for Oni on and off so that his footing disappeared the moment he teleported to it, only to reappear a moment later?