The place hadn’t yet been organized.  A pair of beds sat in one corner, surrounded by assorted pieces of furniture.  The building’s interior was dry, crisp, and brightly lit.  It might have appeared sterile, if not for the spray paint on much of the sheet metal, and the tracks of dried mud on the ground near the door.

True sterility is hard to come across these days, isn’t it, in most parts of the city?

Our arrival was met by the furious barking of a half-dozen dogs.  A set of gates ringing the front door stopped them from attacking us.  

Hm. We might not be visiting Imp here.

Brian was sitting on the far end of the room, beside Aisha.  He wore his regular sparring uniform, and Aisha wore much the same thing, though she was wearing shorts instead of yoga pants.

Hiya. I take it Rachel’s around too, and probably Alec. I guess we’re about to see Taylor trying (successfully, somehow) to get the remaining Undersiders on her side. This ought to be interesting.

3 Days Ago

Oh nice, this is new.

So we’re going back to the day Taylor met Imp and finding out what the deal is. Sounds good to me!

I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, long and slow.

“I got your back,” Lisa told me.  I nodded.

Whatcha doooin’?

With a push, the door swung wide open.

The inside of the building didn’t match the exterior.  It was situated in one of the low-lying areas of the Docks, where the flooding had yet to fully dissipate.

I guess they are out to find and recruit Imp, much like Kid Win with Chariot.

The buildings around here were in such bad shape that nobody was willing to use them for shelter or venture inside to take things.

And considering the state of things, that takes a lot.

I suppose there’s no reason to expect to find Imp here, then? Unless she’s the exception to the “nobody”..

On the inside, however, the place was reinforced with girders and beams.  Pieces of sheet metal sat between the thick metal shafts and the exterior wall, with holes cut to accommodate the windows.  Handles on the metal shutters suggested that the plywood could be moved aside in a pinch.  At ground level, there were stacked sandbags of a slightly different make from the usual, with plastic stapled over each pile.

Hm. Don’t judge a bookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk kkkkk kk k  k     k       k         k, I guess. Or a building.

…oh right, “The inside of the building didn’t match the exterior.” right at the top of the paragraph.

(See, this is one reason why I don’t usually liveblog while slightly sleepy. If that keeps up I’m gonna have to split the session.)

Parasite 10.2

Everybody do the flop!

Alright, now that our faces have been tenderized a bit, we’re all ready to read some Worm!

So, last chapter we got to learn a bit about Imp and see the resurfacing of one of Regent’s darker sides. Then one of them, probably Imp but possibly Regent, played a prank by controlling Sophia’s body to faux attack Taylor.

Today, we’ll almost certainly find out for certain which one it was. If it was Imp, we’ll probably learn a bit more about her power, too.

But if it was Regent… One possibility is that this was the entire reason for the torture in the first place. The thing that could take minutes or hours depending on Shadow Stalker. Regent’s power is to control bodies on a small scale, an impulse here and an impulse there, but maybe breaking down someone’s mind through torture allows him to take full control because they’ll have a harder time fighting it?

I think it’s time to jump in and find out. 🙂

I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit sleepy today. Efforts to become diurnal again are going well, but my body hasn’t quite caught up yet.

Still, though, I don’t want to postpone today’s liveblog session (in part because something I thought might force me to postpone to tomorrow ended up getting postponed to tomorrow itself), so I’m going to try to give you a proper quality liveblog. Hell, maybe it’ll help me be less sleepy. But yeah, if my sleepiness does become too much of an issue, I’ll just have to split the chapter.

End of Parasite 10.1

She totally gotcha, Taylor.

This was a nice chapter. Kind of relaxed up until that last bit, despite Sophia’s screams in the background, and we got to know Imp a bit – she’s restless, she’s a bit dramatic, she’s either somewhat disinterested or likes to feign that, and she is, predictably enough, mischievious. I like her.

That little trick she played at the end there – or at least I assume that’s what’s going on, it technically hasn’t been confirmed yet… y’know, Regent does have a habit of calling Taylor “dork”, and his power involves controlling other people’s bodies, just not to this extent. I suppose it’s possible that torturing Sophia somehow unlocked stronger aspects of his power??

But on the other hand, it’s the perfect timing to show off Imp’s power, and I did bring up the possibility of this being it before the prank happened.

Hm. Shit, now I’m unsure.

Anyway, that little trick either Imp or Regent played at the end there was kind of disruptive, and I doubt Grue is going to like it (maybe not Taylor either), but it seems like the kind of thing they could all have a good laugh about later. 🙂

So yeah, next time we’ll hopefully collapse the wave function on Schrödinger’s prankster and maybe see some results of the torture. Sheesh, that sounds like a terrible thing to look forward to. “Oh hi guys, I’m Krixwell and I hope to see results of t o r t u r e, doesn’t that sound nice?”

See you next time!

For several long seconds, we remained there, unmoving.  Brian and Imp appeared in my peripheral vision, but they stopped when they saw Shadow Stalker.

Hm.

Yeeah, this is one hell of a tense situation, but why is nobody doing anything? Is it because Shadow Stalker is stuck between a hostage and a hard place? If she kills Taylor, there’s no way the remaining Undersiders don’t attack.

Shadow Stalker started laughing, then stood, holstering her crossbow.  I felt Regent stand in the other room.  When the kitchen door opened, he was laughing as well – the exact same cadence as Shadow Stalker.

Oooor maybe I was spot on about Imp being able to possess or otherwise control people. Multiple people at a time, by the looks of it. Is that how Sophia got loose in the first place – to play a prank on the others?

He ran his fingers through his hair, and Shadow Stalker moved one hand, as if to do the same thing, but the hood she wore stopped her.

It seems like she’s limited in how much she can control them individually without it carrying over to the other person/people being controlled.

She stepped away, and her movement seemed uncannily out of character; maybe a bit of a slouch, a bit of swagger, that hadn’t been there before.  Her eyes met mine.

Out of character, because it isn’t her. Other than physically.

“Fuck!” I shouted, standing.  How?

Bitch climbed up off the couch, and Tattletale stood, looking to me, eyes wide.

I wonder if that look was enough to tell Tattle exactly what Taylor just sensed.

When I realized why her eyes were wide, I let the bugs flow from beneath the panels of my costume.  I knew in an instant that Shadow Stalker was behind me.

Well shitfuck.

Deftly, she grasped my wrist, knocked me to the ground, and then pointed her crossbow straight at my eye, the arrowhead clinking against the lens of my mask.  Which definitely wasn’t bulletproof or arrowproof.

If she wasn’t murderous before…

I turned my attention back to my book, looked up again when I heard a bang from the kitchen, a grunt and a scream.

Dang it, still not going into the topic of how and why Imp ended up on the team. Oh well. Maybe that’s next chapter?

The bugs I’d placed on Regent didn’t show anything amiss, but I couldn’t really get anything from the contact with Shadow Stalker.  She was violently flickering in and out of her shadow state, now, and the slow speed with which she was returning to normal seemed to suggest she was fighting the urge to use her power.

Sheesh, Regent, what did you do?

Regent was standing, but he hadn’t called for help, so I started to read again.

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I’d read the same page four more times and realized I hadn’t actually taken in any information, I dog-eared the page and closed my book.

Relatable.

I focused on each person in the building in turn, followed by a double checking of the spider webs, the others here in the apartment-

Hm?

What’s up?

I stopped short.  Regent was sitting, unmoving, and in the last ten seconds or so, Shadow Stalker had disappeared from the chair.

Fuck.