Krixwell Liveblogs

It took a long time.  Five minutes, maybe ten.  But his skin crept back, tearing where it had been pinned to the wall, joining back together, then healing.  Even the scratches that had criss-crossed his chest since he’d fought Cricket began to mend.

So this double trigger event, or whatever it actually was, seems to have given Grue at least two new powers: Monochrome avatars and regeneration. The latter doesn’t relate much to the power he already had, but they both relate heavily to his needs in this particular situation. A way to fight back and a way to pull himself together.

The healing stopped before it was entirely finished.  I saw the figure appear again.  The monochrome, half-formed Brian.

I guess he can’t do both at once?

Mercilessly, it tore out the metal studs that had impaled Brian’s limbs to the wall.  It caught Brian, then laid him carefully on the ground.

Oh yeah, I suppose healing while those were still there might be a bad idea.

He couldn’t walk, so he dragged himself towards us.

Better than what he could do when they got here, at least.

He had another trigger event.  Two new powers?  Three, if I counted the way his power was diminishing my own?

Oh yeah, I guess that might be worth counting too, though it feels more like an upgrade to his existing power.

(The monochrome avatar also ties in with his existing power to some extent, but it can be used separately.)

He touched my hand, held it between his own.  I could feel something thrumming through me, willing me to take hold of it.

Can he heal others too? Get rid of their paralysis?

It took me a minute to figure out how.  The exposed bone of my forehead itched, then sang in an exquisite agony as it mended.  My skin was next.  My seized up muscles were last.  My power was last to mend, and I regained my control, though the diminished effect continued.

He can! That’s awesome. The Undertravelers have their own healer now!

Monochrome Brian lunged after them, but the floor of the freezer shattered beneath one foot.  He lost his orientation, then flickered out of existence once more.

Damn, between this and pulverizing Burnscar’s head, he’s clearly super strong. He doesn’t have the same protection of the surface under him that Siberian does, though.

I could see Brian from where I lay, as I struggled to breathe with the one-hundred and whatever pounds that were piled on top of me.  He hung there, haggard, glaring at nothing in particular.

I suspect he’s been seeing through the eyes of his monochrome avatar.

The man didn’t reappear, but the stream of incongruent events continued; I could see one of Brian’s ribs twitch like the limb of a dying insect.

That doesn’t sound like a good thing, unless it turns out Brian works like the hellhounds now and there’s a baby Brian cradled in his chest.

With a glacial slowness, his body parts began retracting back into place.  The metal frames holding his intestines and organs into place bent, then gave way in the face of the inexorable pull.

Niice.

I still don’t fully know how this happened, though I suspect it has to do with the idea of double triggers, but I’m all for Brian coming out of this in one piece and stronger for it.

Almost casually, he reached out and seized Bonesaw’s hands, which gripped the drive.  He raised her off of the ground, her feet kicking, and she grunted as his grip tightened.

I’ll be sad to see her exit the story, but she absolutely should die.

“The things I put up with,” Jack said, seemingly unconcerned.  He whipped out his knife, slashing at the pseudo-Brian.  There was no effect.  “Hm.”

Can’t slash through darkness and light, pal.

Slashing through the actual Grue might work better. Maybe.

Grabbing a meat cleaver from the kitchen counter, he hacked at Bonesaw instead.  It took three swings to sever her arms at the wrists.

“She’ll be fine, she can fix that with her mouth.”

She hit the ground running,

Didn’t make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb

her stumps jammed into her armpits.  They disappeared over the counter of the dining hall, Jack helping Bonesaw up. 

It does look like Bonesaw might get out of this alive, actually.

“Which you’ll have to leave behind.  We’ll retreat.”

“I just need the hard drive!  I’ve been trying to get data like this for ages, and it’s a new system!”

Just let her grab it real quick, man. Save yourself the arguing.

Bonesaw started to head for the walk-in fridge where Brian was, but Jack grabbed her by the back of the neck.  “No.”

Does he think Brian would be able to kill her too if she went in there, maybe? Hell, I suppose that might be true.

“It’s ‘kay!  Two seconds!  I’ll be right back!”  She slipped out of his grip, running into the freezer, opening one of the cases that looked Mannequin-made.

Well, let’s see how this goes.

The darkness continued to dissipate around Brian, and I was aware as a masculine figure flickered into existence in the midst of the cloud, in one corner of the walk-in freezer.

There he is!

It was Brian, but it wasn’t.  It was colored in monochrome, with one eye open, the other half-formed.

Markings in white covered his flesh, spiraling out from one pectoral, covering his chest and stomach.  His hands were white to the elbow, and he was sexless.  A ken doll with only more white patterns between his legs.

“Are you a boy or a girl?”
“I’m a villain.”
“No, I mean, what’s between your legs?”
“White patterns.”

Memes aside, he looks awesome. I wonder if the white markings and monochrome rather than black means this power upgrade gave Grue some light to balance his darkness?

Or maybe he was white and the markings were in black?

And here I thought Siberian was the zebra of the cast.

The darkness slipped away, retracing its steps through my body, undoing its passage between my organs and joints, through and inside my blood vessels.

See ya, darkness.

Maybe. For all I know, this might’ve been Grue’s last hurrah.

A clearing formed.  An expanse of dim light, lit only by one shaft of light that managed to come in through the corner of a window.  Burnscar’s head was pulverized, unrecognizable.

Damn.

She lay limp, unmoving, dead.

One down!

(Two if you count Hack Job.)

“Interesting,” Jack said, looking down at his fallen teammate.

Cold as fuck, dude.

“Yes!  I’m almost positive I got this on record!” Bonesaw squealed.

Through the darkness? …I suppose it makes sense she’d try to develop a way to record through the darkness while testing it.

Or maybe she means just when the darkness started flowing, so she can figure out where it came from.

Also, cold as fuck.

But I could still see through my bugs.  I could still feel what they felt.  They’d gathered for the barrier I’d tried to erect between Parian and Bonesaw, and they’d dispersed in the time since, touching everyone present.

Nice.

Burnscar had put out her flame, was cradling her hand to her chest.  I could feel Bonesaw and Jack, standing a short distance away.

Yeah, looks like they felt something, plus whatever is going on with Grue’s power.

I could feel Trickster, Sundancer, Tattletale, Parian, Ballistic and Imp.  I could feel Grue, hanging from the wall of the walk-in freezer.

Roll call!

I could feel another person, someone who hadn’t been there a moment ago.  A man standing in the darkness.

…hello there, mister ominous.

Are you some sort of… avatar of Grue or something, a new body made of solid darkness?

I’d speculate on it being another member of the Nine, but the Nine don’t actually have any properly humanoid men right now besides Jack.

I doubt it’s Regent.

…yeah, no, “Grue’s new body” is actually my strongest guess right now.

The man strode forward, uncaring about the darkness.  He caught Burnscar around the face with one broad hand, and he brought it down hard against the counter.

Friendly, can seemingly see in the darkness… I feel like I might be on the money here, as drastic as my theory might be.

I was dropped to the ground.  Burnscar fell across me, limp and unmoving, and the man flickered out of existence.

Huh. Is he going to show up again somewhere else in the darkness?

Where have I seen this before?  I thought. 

When a Dandelion couple went on a mall date.

But somewhere in the course of forming and finishing the thought, I’d broken away from whatever it was I’d seen.  It was slipping from my mind.

Aww.

I’m looking forward to seeing whether or not the Nine are as out of it as Taylor after this, though.

The void I was in was not the world of the entities, but Brian’s world.  Brian’s power.

Wait, wh- oh. Oh, he’s flooded the room, hasn’t he? At least up to Taylor’s eyes.

The darkness coiled around me, through me.  It was different, slithering past my skin to brush against my heart, tracing the edges of my wounds, the gouge in my skull that Bonesaw had made with her saw, slithering over and through my brain.

Is… that a good thing? I don’t think darkness entering your brain is usually a good thing, at least symbolically speaking.

I could feel my power slip just a little out of my reach, my range dropping, my control over the bugs just a touch weaker.

So did his power just get upgraded so he could block out people’s powers with it too?

Coming to a consensus, it transmitted a decision.  Destination.

So this would be why we haven’t seen them come to our world. They decided on the Wormverse.

The reply was almost immediate.  Agreement.

More signals passed between them, blatant and subtle.  A melding of minds, a sharing of ideas, as intimate as anything I’d seen.  They continued to communicate, focusing on that one world, on the possible futures that could unfold, committing to none, but explored the possibilities that lay before them.

And being along for the ride, I suppose that means Taylor also gets to explore the possibilities.

They broke apart, the two massive beings that spiralled together, and I gradually lost my glimpse into what they were thinking, what they were communicating.

Interesting. So maybe these visions happen specifically in relation to two of them meeting?

Whatever view they’d had of the future, they were losing it.  It was too much to pick through on their own.

Oh, I see. That makes sense.

And it communicated with its partner.  Signals transmitted not through noise, but wavelengths transmitted across the most fundamental forces of the universe.  In the same way, it received information, it worked with its partner to decide the destination.

I suppose if they shift between realities, they just need to figure out which reality to shift into in the end?

It viewed a world, one point in time in the present, and in a heartbeat, it took in trillions of images.  Billions of individuals, viewed separately and as a tableau.  Innumerable scenes, landscapes, fragments of text, even ideas.  In that one heartbeat, I saw people who were somehow familiar.

But does that mean they’re truly familiar to Taylor, or familiar to the Dandelion whose senses she’s borrowing?

A young man, a teenager, out of place among his peers, men who were burly with muscle.  They were drinking.  He was tan, with narrow hips, his forehead creased in worry above thick glasses, but his mouth was curled in the smallest of wry smiles over something one of the men was saying.

Hmm… Alternate universe past Danny?

A snapshot, an image of a moment.

It was my world, my Earth it was looking at.

Oh. This universe’s past Danny?