Category: argh krix fix your categories

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“Where is he?” I growled.

Looks like we’re starting right where we left off. And Skitter is… well, not pissed so much as determined, I think.

“As if I’m going to tell you.  To think Jack called you the clever worm.”

Hey, I’ll have you know the plan that got you here was mostly, if not entirely, her idea.

“Don’t call me that.”  I felt a flare of irritation that bordered on anger.  Was that me, or was it her power at work?

See, the reason I said she wasn’t pissed was that it didn’t seem like the right emotion for Skitter to be having right now, though I could see her being annoyed at Cherish after she refused to answer. So yes, there’s a good chance Cherish is messing with her head.

But why introduce anger of all emotions? Crippling dejection seems like a much better choice. Though of course, Cherish needs to keep it subtle due to Coil’s orders to kill her if anyone acts out of character.

Tattletale put a hand on my shoulder.  I shut my mouth.  She asked Cherish, “What do you want in exchange for your help?  You want us to let you go?”

Honestly, I suspect either more, or the opposite. Cherish has reason to want to get away from the Nine. Her best options are to leave the city (which Coil could help with) or get protection.

Cherish laughed a little, and it reminded me of Alec’s own dry chuckle.  “No.  Definitely not.  In exchange for the information about what the Imp is up to, you’re going to give me medical treatment, you’re going to keep me here, and you’re going to keep me safe.”

Thought so.

(I was leaning way more towards that than help leaving the city, for the record. The leaving option was an afterthought.)

Also, I notice that she hasn’t included the information about Grue in this line. She’s reserving her other bargaining chip for something else.

Snare 13.7

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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!

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More SU thoughts:

While Lapis may be more powerful than Leviathan in terms of hydrokinesis, I do still think Leviathan would win if it were between the two of them, at least if Lapis didn’t fly way out of reach quickly enough. Lapis is a glass cannon while Leviathan is practically invincible, and even if Lapis is immune to water attacks (unknown), Leviathan has attacks that don’t use the water, like using his claws or tail. Lapis, on the other hand, doesn’t have much in terms of non-watery attacks besides using water to levitate objects above a target and letting gravity do the rest – as far as we know, anyway.

However, if anyone can contain Leviathan, it’s probably Lapis. She has displayed the ability to keep people trapped in levitating bubbles of water (though Leviathan’s swimming speed might mess with that), and she has the power to make a city-sized one if she cares to. She can also make chains out of hardened water, which can be quite effective. She’d need to find a permanent place for him or keep sustaining these restraints, though. Maybe she could make him a little lake on a different planet?

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(spoilers for SU ahead, right up to the latest episode)

So, what with Lapis and Bismuth (and Diamonds???), do you have anything to add regarding CGs vs. Undersiders or S9?

Apart from fire resistance (good against Burnscar, obviously) and a specialty in shapeshifting her arms into tools and weapons, Bismuth doesn’t have a lot of good combat powers that we know of, beyond what most Gems have. She’d be super good as a motivator and weaponsmith, though, and is capable of making weapons with magical properties. Her weapons and weapon upgrades might give the other Gems some new tricks, and while she doesn’t have many combat powers, she does have experience in using what she’s got. But yeah, send her (alongside Garnet, the best Burnscar counter the Gems have) after Burnscar.

The Diamonds may be less useful than you’d think simply because so far, all the powers Blue and Yellow have shown us only work on Gems (and Steven). Still, though, they’re resilient and big, making them similar to Fenja and Menja. And, judging by Pink, it’s likely they have a lot of powers they haven’t shown us yet, some of which may be incredibly strong against the Undersiders or the Nine.

Lapis… oh, boy, Lapis.

Apart from being only tangentially affiliated with the Crystal Gems up until the latest episode, the main reason I left Lapis out of previous “Gems vs” posts (I’m gonna make a tag for that at this point) is that she made the outcome too clear.

Lapis is more powerful than Leviathan. Not defensively (she’s a glass cannon like Shatterbird), admittedly, but her hydrokinesis could drain an ocean while she was cracked (not to mention pull all that water upwards). If the battle happens somewhere there’s a lot of water – which describes both Beach City and post-Leviathan Brockton Bay, Lapis is practically a goddess. It’s just a matter of staying alive and unpoofed to use that raw power. Jack and Shatterbird might be her main threats, considering Lapis is typically out in the open and sometimes flying, but Lapis is far from defenseless.

Huh, Burnscar really gets the short straw against the Gems, doesn’t she? Discounting non-Garnet fusions, the Gems have three members who are immune to fire, two members who can predict where Burnscar will teleport, one member who can exude coldness and create ice, one member who controls large amounts of water… Apart from Lapis “OP” Lazuli, Garnet is definitely the best one to match up against Burnscar, though, between fire resistance, future vision, super speed and rocket gauntlets. Burnscar can’t even teleport through the fire before a pair of explosive hands are soaring towards where she’s going to be.

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On the subject of Siberian’s invulnerability, remember that she’s gone up against the Triumvirate multiple times. I think you can reasonably assume that she’s invulnerable to most things Legend or Eidolon can dish out, which goes way beyond just being invulnerable to forces.

Fuck, that’s true. Eidolon in particular should be able to find something to work around a selective invulnerability.

I did think about this factoid, yes, but I failed to consider it beyond Legend’s lasers (which were relevant to whether light could hurt her).

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For me, at least, it’s HEAVILY implied that Ballistic’s reluctance to kill Cherish was Cherish sensing murderous intent towards her and then fucking around with it. The whole thing seems reminiscent of her powers in general.

Oh yeah, that’s a really good point. And Taylor didn’t think that was the case because Cherish hadn’t given any indication that she’d noticed the ambushers.

The one thing that makes me wonder, though: why didn’t she do the same thing to Trickster (and maybe Skitter)? Did she miss that murderous intent?

Also, there might be a range issue. Cherish has a decent range for messing with emotions (and a much larger range for sensing them), but it has seemed to be more like “across the street” than “three blocks away”. Though that’s a minimum, so who knows.

End of Snare 13.6

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This was a pretty solid chapter!

I was a bit surprised by Wildbow’s decision to partially eschew the Unspoken Plan Guarantee, but what was left of it still allowed things to go well. And hey, complication at the end, as expected, though I didn’t think the end would be after the ambush.

My remaining predictions came true too: Reluctance to kill came into play (though Ballistic’s turned out more troublesome than Sundancer’s, and may have been a blessing in disguise) and we’re still shooting for the shogi plan. I’m very pleased with that last thing, though Cherish may have made that difficult.

We still don’t know where Imp is or what she’s doing, but we have learned that she was supposed to “help [Cherish] get back at the Nine” and that Imp did respond to Cherish in a way that Cherish could hear. Cherish implied that it would be surprising for Imp to have found a way to get this information back to the rest of the Undertravelers, though, which might mean bad things if she wasn’t just implying that to increase her bargaining power.

Next chapter, the Undertravelers are going to need to figure out how to circumvent the fact that the Nine know about Regent’s power and also how to get Grue out of the living hell that is being captured by a team that includes Bonesaw and five other sadistic pieces of shit. I feel like the answers to both things may lie in the words “as soon as possible”.

We might also learn more from Cherish about Imp’s fate.

So yeah. See you then!