Anyways, this? This whole situation? They liked it.
Of course.
They wanted to keep things this way, and that meant they were going to stop anyone else from fixing it.
Ahh, I see. That explains the airport, too.
They would intercept supplies, attack rescue workers and they would push construction vehicles into a heap on the beach.
Makes sense.
I’d have to deal with these guys. It wasn’t just intercepting any groups that made their way into my territory. That was easy, all things considered. No, I also had to deal with the small army that would come marching through here wanting retaliation over my having kicked the asses of any groups that had made their way into my territory.
Oh yeah, that’s right, this is part of Taylor’s job description now.
Or, worse, I could imagine that some were moving in and keeping the residents around for their own amusement. It was not a pleasant thought. The kind of people who had gravitated towards the Merchants tended to have a lot of resentment.
Oh boy.
Specifically, they had resentment towards people who had what they didn’t. If they happened upon a family with Kate the soccer mom, Tommy, the kid with more video games than teeth, and Joe the blue-collar worker with a steady job? If they weren’t letting them go? I was guessing that hypothetical family would be in for a hell of a rough time.
Yeeeeah that doesn’t sound pleasant.
It might have sounded silly, that line of speculation, but I’d spent time in the shelters. I’d heard about how vicious and depraved the Merchants were getting.
They were depraved to begin with, too. There is nothing good about this.
It fit their modus operandi. They had been bums, drunks and addicts, looked down on others, before Leviathan came. In the wake of what Leviathan had done to the city, leaving everything in shambles, with social services gone or in chaos and even basic utilities in short supply, everyone else had been brought down to their level.
…which would be why they had a membership boost. I see.
The Merchants were even, I suspected, thriving.
Yeah, judging by what Piggot told us, that would be accurate.
With strength in numbers and virtually nothing holding them back, they had become like pack animals. They roamed the city in bands of three to twenty, robbing, raping, pillaging and stealing.
Eesh.
They were settling in some of the better areas, the neighborhoods that still had power or water, and forcing the existing residents out.
I mean I get that many of them got the short straw, but that doesn’t justify stealing the long straws.
A scene up ahead caught my attention. Two pieces of machinery lay in a heap just below the lip of the boardwalk above. A bulldozer and an eighteen wheeler with a crane-mounted claw attached had both been driven or pushed over the edge of the boardwalk and onto the beach.
Huh. What happened here? Villains afoot? Slaughterhouse, perhaps?
Or maybe this just happened and Dragon did it by accident with a high-speed mech after recognizing Taylor on the surviving surveillance cams (also known as survivance cams)?
The cab of the truck with the claw had been partially crushed by the bulldozer.
Sounds like a scene out of a demolition derby, or the Blues Brothers. Same thing, really.
Though it was barely past six in the morning, a group of laborers were already there, some on the ledge above, others down on the beach, all gathered around the trucks.
o hai
Spray paint had been used to draw the same crude symbol on both the side of the eighteen wheeler and the concrete wall separating the beach from the Boardwalk above. A capital ‘M’, with two taller lines drawn vertically through it much the same as you’d do with a dollar sign. The Merchants.
Ahh. Those villains afoot.
What do they want here? Just generally mess with the restoration efforts, or is there some sort of blackmail going on?
I started running the moment I reached the beach, glad for the chance to resume my routine.
So here’s the question for the grand prize: Will this be when Dragon finds her target? And if she does, will she try to get in touch immediately?
It was a strange environment, eerie. The wooden pathway, the literal boardwalk that had run in front of the stores, was now a skeletal ruin that loomed above the piles of trash that the bulldozers had all pushed to one side, twice as tall as I was.
RIP.
The beach had been cleared, which was a feat unto itself. The work of the bulldozers and the crews with rakes had revealed the packed, dirt-like layer from beneath the loose sand.
Huh.
I guess they needed to clear that away a bit to start rebuilding.
Opposite the trash piles, by the water, there were mounds of irregularly shaped pieces of concrete, set to break up the waves and prevent the highest tides from dragging the trash, debris and machinery into the ocean.
That would be an unpleasant déjà vu.
Opposite the trash piles, by the water, there were mounds of irregularly shaped pieces of concrete, set to break up the waves and prevent the highest tides from dragging the trash, debris and machinery into the ocean.
This place could definitely not recognize itself in the mirror these days.
I made my way to the building’s cellar, opened a hatch and entered the adjacent storm drain. The same builders that had put the building together had blocked off the drain so the water flow wouldn’t make it impassable, and I was left with a clear route down to the section of beach where the storm drains emptied.
Niice.
Also, seems reminiscent of the old shortcut to the Loft.
I wasn’t sure if Coil had plans to keep the city’s workers from trying to unblock the drain, but I supposed that was the sort of thing we could rely on him to handle. In the meantime, a third of the storm drains were too clogged with rubble and detritus to drain, and another third didn’t connect to anything anymore.
Considering Leviathan’s antics, it’s no surprise the storm drains in particular are out of order.
Add the fact that most of the storm drains were a little out of the way of regular foot traffic, and it wasn’t too conspicuous.
If there was anything about myself that I didn’t like, it was primarily psychological. Guilt was a big one. The idea that my dad might dislike me if he got to know me, now? That was another. That my mom, were she alive and showing up at the door, might be disappointed in me? Sobering.
Oof, ow, ouch…
Who let Wildbow coat his words in bone hurting juice?
As he’d done with his own underground base, Coil had set my lair up with a discreet entrance and exit.
Makes sense. Never know when enemies might be blocking off the front door.
Leaving through the front door would be conspicuous, if I started working with anyone beyond my teammates.
That too. As I mentioned, surveilling the building for a while would quickly reveal that Taylor worked for Coil if she’d kept using the same door as the more obvious of Coil’s folk.
Skinny teenage girl with black curly hair entering and leaving the same building that the skinny teenage villain with black curly hair was operating out of? No.
This was not recognizing myself in a very different way. There were still things I didn’t like, like my wide mouth, my small chest and the lack of curves or any real femininity.
At least bugs can help with a couple of those, at least to outside observers.
My scars stood out with my slight tan, a teardrop shaped mark on my forearm where Bitch’s dog had bitten me, a wavy mark on my cheek where Sophia had dug her fingernails in,and a line by my earlobe where she’d tried to tear my ear off.
Ow, yeah. Man, imagine returning to Danny and trying to explain away all those things.
“Leviathan got into the shelter I was in and tried to tear my ear off. It didn’t work, so he left me alone.”
But my physical flaws no longer consumed my attention when I looked at myself. I felt comfortable with my body, like I’d somehow earned it, the way it was, and it was mine now.
😀
At least as long as Regent keeps his hands off.
I wasn’t sure if that made any sense, even to myself.
To say I barely recognized myself was.. how could I put it? It was true, but I could also remember myself months ago, when I’d look at my reflection and I would be so focused on the flaws and the things I didn’t like about myself that I never felt familiar with the person I was seeing in the mirror.
I felt especially justified in pulling out that Undertale screenshot in the previous post because, like Undertale had a previous mirror near the beginning of the game that said “It’s you!”, Worm also had a mirror scene in the beginning, all the way back in 1.1. I think there’s a sort of connection between then and now, just like with the mirrors in Undertale.
However, maybe the other possible text for the later mirror is more appropriate here: “It’s me.” In which “me” is not the same as “you”. Without going too much into spoilers, this signifies that the protagonist doesn’t recognize themself in the mirror anymore, because their actions over the course of the game have changed them so thoroughly that the flavor text claims that it’s the narrator in the mirror.
In this way, mirrors can be damn effective literary tools for allowing a character to get introspective about the ways they’ve changed over the course of the story.
All that said… it actually sounds like Taylor approves more of what she’s seeing now than what she saw before.
It was as though it was always a stranger I was looking at, and I would be left vaguely surprised at the combination of features across from me.
Or at least not much less. She’s just…
She didn’t get the “It’s you.” on the first mirror.
Did I look different? My skin had a light tan, now. I’d spent more time outdoors in the past few weeks.
Taylor’s descent to the dark side, also known as “the ancient demonic realm of outdoors”, is beginning to show physically.
In the week and a half I’d spent in the shelter, I hadn’t exactly had books or TV, so I’d walked during the day, making my way across the city to check on the loft and to see the state of my dad’s house. I’d walked at night, too, when I’d been unable to sleep, but people hardly tanned doing that.
I wouldn’t know. What’s “the day”?
Also, good to hear Taylor’s taken the time to check on her old home. How is it doing? And more importantly, how is Danny doing (when he’s not busy being Coil in Taylor’s nightmares)?
I couldn’t pin down exactly how or why, but the definition in my face and body had changed. It was possible I’d had a growth spurt.
Perhaps. On top of that, you’ve gotten a lot of exercise.
Some of it was perhaps the tan giving more accent to the features of my body or face. Maybe it was that I’d been eating a pretty lean diet when I was staying at the shelter, coupled with the fact that I’d been so active over the past two months. I hadn’t spent six hours every day sitting around in school, I’d been in fights, I’d been running, and I’d ridden the dogs.
Yep.
I had some muscle definition in my arms, now, and I thought maybe I was standing straighter.
That one might be more mental than anything. This whole adventure has really boosted Taylor’s self-confidence.
Or maybe it was all those minor things helped by the simple fact that I was dressing differently, that my hair hadn’t been cut in a while, and that I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
