Swinging underhand, I brought the two-by-four up toward the widest part of the buzzsaw whirl that was Mannequin.  Through luck as much as intent, I managed a glancing blow on the end of the blade, knocking it up toward the ceiling.  The momentum of his rotation managed the rest.  He tipped and crashed onto his side, literally falling apart in the process.

WOOO!

Lengths of chain connected everything, but nothing was in the right socket.  Some sort of built-in defense mechanism against heavy impacts?

I guess so?

My swarm flooded over him to draw out more lines of silk and to spill glue -both organic glue from my spiders and brand name supplies- where possible.

He’s getting glued to the floor while split into lots of pieces and covered in colors. I love this way to defeat him!

He began to reel the various parts in, slowly.  I hurried in to grab the one arm he’d disconnected from the chain and hurled it away.  Then I seized his head.

Niiice.

I knew he wouldn’t have anything particularly valuable in his head.  It was too obvious a target.  But it was easy to get my hands on, it wasn’t connected to too many other things, and there was a chance he might want to keep it.

Ahaha! I love that last phrase in this context.

“Y’know, maybe he might want to keep his head? Seems kinda greedy if you ask me, but hey, we all have things we feel attached to.”

Some carried the scraps of silk cloth from my work on the costumes: The masks I’d made as trial runs, the belts and straps.  As with the silk that drifted in the air, they were caught by the blades rather than being cut.

Ooh, larger patches to really mess him up!

Mannequin soon had a dark blur whirling around his upper body.

Sweet!

Other bugs packed the remainder of my costume design supplies.  Tubes of paint were rigid enough to be cut by the blades, creating small, wet, colorful explosions.  A large bottle of glue made its way to my hand, and I hurried to tear off the lid before a large group of bugs carted it off to him, holding it upside-down over his head so streams of the stuff could spill onto his head and shoulders.

That’s a really bad shampoo you’re using there, Mannequin!

Man, he’s going to be such a colorful mess once Taylor is done.

Packages of dye were torn in half by his blades, expanding into clouds of black, brown, gray and lavender powder, sticking to any liquid on him, filling every gap to highlight the hidden slots for his weaponry and the seams where everything fit together.

Ooh, that’s helpful too!

Especially if part of the goal is to locate the seams and get something through them.

The part where I was caught off guard was when he changed tactics, going after the civilians for the second time.

Shit.

“Hey!” I shouted after him.

I’d hoped to be more subtle about my second phase of attack.

Half of the swarm I’d brought from my lair was still waiting for the instruction.

Hmm.

Earlier she was talking about how she needed something from the base. Was she just talking about the spiders, or is whatever that was about to come into play with phase two?

I deployed them while running after Mannequin, stopping at the wood pile to get another two-by-four.

Someone screamed as Mannequin started cutting into them.  Two or three people, cornered by the monster.  One already in harm’s way.

This was always something that might happen. I would honestly be much more surprised to see all the remaining civilians get out of this entirely unharmed. Well, by Mannequin, I mean.

“Fucker!  Stop!”  I shouted, my words useless. 

I think he knows this is getting to you. That’s probably a large part of why he’s doing it.

I moved on to the second phase of my attack.  As I’d done with the pens, markers, the candles and the bottles of disinfectant, I’d instructed my bugs to arrive with supplies in hand.

Yes… now which supplies? I really can’t even begin to guess what she’s got in mind. Maybe something to increase the effects of the spider webbing?

“Come on,” I muttered under my breath.

Blades speared out of slots all over his body, some of which I hadn’t even guessed were present.

– F I N A L   F O R M –

Then he began spinning furiously, every body part rotating the individual blades with enough force that webs were cut before they could be secured in place.

Well, this is unfortunate.

Different tactic.  This time, the swarm took its time passing over him, thirty or forty spiders working at a time, their work relentless, ceaseless.  Each spider cut the threads so they drifted down like strings in the wind.

Niiice.

Falling gently instead of being stretched taut, they would drape over the spinning blades, attach to other trailing silk, and form a looser cloud.

I’d anticipated this.

…of course she did. Good job!

He tilted his head, looking at the arm that was stubbornly refusing to retract back into place.

I made my sixth sweep with my bugs.  As the swarm passed, his head snapped up, looking at me.  As much as he could without eyes, anyways.

“Oh come on.”

He knew what was happening.

Defeat, that’s what!

A better cape than I might have had a quip there, an insult.  I hurt in too many places, in my ribs, my stomach, my shoulders, neck, back and legs.

Worm as a story doesn’t seem to do these sorts of quips very often, but maybe that’s more because of who our protagonist is than because of battle banter not really being much of a thing in the Wormverse. Between Mouse Protector and this comment, this does seem to be the case.

Some of the pain was fierce, like a red-hot poker being driven with a constant, ceaseless pressure into the body parts in question.  I couldn’t spare the breath.

But yeah, it’s clearly also a bit of realism. The capes don’t banter too much because they’re focused on the fights and getting through the pain.

The chain dropped from his elbow socket, and I watched as he paced over to his fallen arm, picked it up, tore the remaining chain out, and clicked it into place.

Uh-oh. Seems the magnets are pre-installed in case of chain failure, not added later to fix it.

Maybe gluing the arms into place in the sockets would work?

I could pinpoint the moment he realized what I was doing.  Extending the chain, he flung it across the room, the blade cutting a wide swathe.

Trying both to stop Taylor and to throw off the spiders?

I ducked clear, but two bystanders were struck down, screaming.  When he moved to retract that chain, the mechanism stalled. 

Ouch. Well, at least the silk worked.

His body was like Armsmaster’s powersuit, but every piece of equipment he added necessitated that he cut away a pound of flesh.

Sure wish you had the tiny tech specialty, huh, Mannequin?

Actually, probably not. He seems like he’d be thrilled at the idea of being less human.

I was inclined to suspect that, crazy as he was, that reality made him more inclined to go for elegant, efficient design over more rugged craftsmanship.

Hmm. Maybe.

The propeller blades in his ankle, the chain retraction mechanisms in his arms, they were built to be lightweight, to use minimal energy, and achieve maximum effect at the same time.

But yeah, this does make sense in general. Especially from the specialty perspective – energy efficiency is another thing that’s really important for the sort of structures Sphere was planning to build.

The last quarter of the retraction process was a fraction slower.  Silk glue gumming up the works, I could hope.  I saw him look at his arm, then flex the fingers, as if to test them.

If he can’t detect the silk, this must be quite confusing to him.

While he was distracted, I made a fifth pass with my formation.  I tried to be more subtle about it, carefully draping the silk over him rather than letting it pull tight against him with enough collective force to move him off-balance.

Clearly you need the Silk Touch enchantment to harvest Mannequin.

…yeah, no, that Minecraft joke was way too forced.

He attacked, stretching out the arm I hadn’t gummed up.  The pain from the most recent hit to my stomach slowed me down, and his fist collided with me, knocking me over for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Skitter’s like a bowling pin at this point, with how regularly she gets knocked over.

I managed to backhand it off of me before he could do anything, and hurried to my feet.

Time to gum up this arm too?

While the arm was still partially extended, I managed to deposit spiders on the chain.  They immediately began straining to produce silk glue on and around the mechanisms that allowed the chain to retract.  One spider wasn’t much, but all together, it added up.

In a lot of cases I would be like “this would be cool in animation or live action”, but this? This reminds me of a different medium. This is more like the process of taking down a video game boss one limb at a time.

He tried to retract the blade in his right arm, but it caught.  Pressing the point against the ground, he bent it back into alignment.  It retracted on his next attempt.

Having a bit of trouble, Mannequin? I’m sure things will only get better for you from here.

Totally.

My strike with the two-by-four hadn’t done much there.  My second just-in-case measure hadn’t worked out.

Ah, right, that’s what did it. Well, it may have won you a moment, at least?

That same arm disconnected and extended towards me as he tried to grab for me, and I turned to one side just in time to avoid being caught.  He fired the other arm out with an almost explosive force and I managed to catch hold of it before it got a grip on my costume.

Mannequin has such a hands-on approach.

My swarm made a fourth pass, focusing on the chain of his extended arm and the joints of his shoulders, elbows, crotch and knees where the webbing had already accumulated to some degree.

I suppose literal mannequin anatomy helps with Taylor’s aversion to putting enough insects in a certain area to get a sense of its shape.

Fifty or sixty spiders stayed on the extended chain, spitting out large amounts of their stickiest webbing.

Excellent!