“Little girl?”

“You know what I mean.  Look at it from his perspective.”

That’s the kind of thinking that led me down the train of thought at the end of this post.

“What if I recruited him?  Gave him the opportunity and the power to help others?”

Hm… It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure he’d accept. First being upstaged by Taylor like this, and then immediately after getting asked to work under her?

“He’d be intolerable.  I mean, sure, things would get better in the short-term.  But over the long haul? You’d wind up with someone who criticizes every last thing you do, every last call you make, to make himself feel better about the fact that he isn’t the one in control, the one calling the shots.”

Yeah, that too. Charlotte might become someone who’s willing to call it as she sees it when Taylor does something she doesn’t think is good, but she’d fill that sort of role in a much more healthy way, criticizing Taylor when and only when she saw a need to criticize her, when there’s something to criticize, in the interest of genuinely helping. This guy would just criticize for the sake of criticizing, in the interest of feeling better about himself.

“Fuck,” I said.  “I thought you said you weren’t good with people.”

Hah! He did, didn’t he!

Then again, it’s not the first time he’s shown an understanding of how people act in response to certain things. For instance, there’s the way he deliberately added an incomplete description of his power because it was easier to catch people off guard with the finer details if they thought they knew his power than if they didn’t know anything about it. That wasn’t anywhere near as thorough as this, though.

“I’m not good with girls, mainly.  Guys?  Or ‘manly’ guys like him?  I’ve met enough people like him in the gyms with my dad, in fighting classes.”

That’s fair.

“Taking up a side business in extermination?” he asked me.  I thought I detected a note of humor in his voice.

Yes, clearly. :p

“Assisting my people.  Some goodwill will help when I’m more firmly in power here.”  I couldn’t help but sound a mite defensive.

“Yep.  That guy over there will be singing your praises.”

“Yeah, I was thinking of inviting him as my plus one to the boxing club gala this weekend. Have some fun beating the crap out of each other in formal clothing.”

I looked over my shoulder at the ‘dad’ who’d been giving me a hard time.  He was ignoring Sierra and Charlotte, who were talking to the larger group of people.  Instead, he watched the bugs cart the dead rats down the street, as if he thought I would slack on the job.

I would imagine that would be the more interesting sight anyway. :p

“I don’t understand people sometimes.”

I don’t know if anyone does, really.

“My guess?  When everything went to hell, he told himself he’d be the ‘man’ for his family.  Take charge, provide, protect.  He failed.  Then some little girl waltzes in and takes care of all that all at once?”

Ah, yeeah, that might spur some irritation.

I could sense Grue a block away, my bugs settling on his helmet, unable to see as they got close.  I could feel that faint push of the darkness billowing away from him.  He’d been watching for a minute or two.

Oy. You’re keeping the boy waiting.

Though to be fair, when you set the location, you weren’t expecting him to be close.

“If there’s nothing else that’s pressing?” I asked.

Silence, a few shaken heads.  I turned to go and meet Grue where he stood at the corner of one building.

See ya! Enjoy your newly ratless house!

“Okay.”

“And measuring cups.”  I smiled behind my mask.

Oh yeah, good call.

Seriously, this whole scene is a fantastic display of Taylor fulfilling her promise to improve things for people in her territory. I love it.

The only question is when it’s going to cross Coil’s line. How long until Coil decides it’s costing more than it’s worth to him?

“We can’t pay you back for this, even if you give us a loan, we won’t be able to.” the mom said.

So they were assuming I was putting myself in some loan shark role.

Well, if not assuming, then at least being prepared for the possibility. It’s a very reasonable reaction, especially since Skitter is supposedly a villain.

Get them indebted to me, leech them for cash.

“It’s on the house,” I waved her off.

“Thank you,” she said, again.  I felt bad for feeling the way I did, but I thought her gratitude was a little muted for what I was giving her.

Hm, yeah. I guess maybe she just doesn’t know how to feel? Again, Skitter is supposedly a villain, but here she is doing things that are not only non-villainous but insanely altruistic for them, for no apparent compensation. Mix not being sure how to feel about that, with not being sure what she’s hearing is true, with it not having fully sunken in what Skitter is actually doing for them and that it’s really happening… Yeah, I could see that leading to some

lack of

enthusiasm.

“So many,” Charlotte gasped, as she saw the three or four hundred rats held high by the swarm.  Judging by the family’s expressions, they hadn’t known how many rats they’d had nesting inside their home.

Yeeah, most of them stayed hidden, didn’t they? Only some of them braved the open.

Turning to the dad, I told him, “Your rat problem is dealt with, and nearly all of the bugs are gone.  Some of my swarm will remain so I can keep an eye out for any future infestations, but you won’t see them.  Now, if you still want to swing at me, I’m okay to go a round or two.  No powers.”

“Man, I’ve been itching for a good unpowered fist fight ever since I stopped sparring with my teammate.”

His mouth twisted in a scowl, but he didn’t move to attack me.

Walking over to Sierra and Charlotte, I quietly asked them, “Would I be right if I guessed he wasn’t the one who asked for help?”

Heh, ya think?

Did any of them ask for help?

“Yeah,” Sierra said, “She did.”

Sierra pointed at the woman who was protectively clutching R.J.’s shoulders.

“Is this satisfactory?” I asked the woman, raising my voice.  “The dead rats will be cleared out of the area in a few minutes.”

Taylor is implicitly asking them if they’ll stay now. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t – they’ve already packed, and this wasn’t a super immediate problem, so they have quite likely arranged a place to go, which might even be better than what they have here.

“They’re really gone?  They won’t come back?”

“They’re gone, and they won’t come back until someone forces me to move out of this territory.”

That’s a nice way to spin it.

“Thank you,” she said.  She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, then stopped.

Hm… Something along the lines of “we owe you”, stopped as she remembered what she was talking to?

And yes, I mean “what”.

“Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine…”

I knew I wouldn’t quite have enough time to clear out the entire house of the rat corpses, so I cheated by hauling the rats through the walls, into the unoccupied neighbor’s residence and out the kitchen window at the back of that building.

Hehe. It would probably have worked better if you’d successfully gotten the angry guy to do the counting. Counting backwards is usually just a little slower, after all.

On the other hand, R.J. might be relatively slow too because of his age. I don’t know, nothing’s been said for or against that.

The last of my bugs left the sky around the house.  I timed the arrival of the last few dead rats with the end of R.J.’s countdown.

Of course.