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A look passed between the two boys.  Which of my points had given them that momentary hesitation?  Still, they nodded again.

I’m guessing that last one.

“Do you guys have a place?”

“Nah,” said shaggy-hair.

“Come on,” I said.

Welcome aboard.

I led them to the nearest spot to get from the beach to the old Boardwalk, and into the Docks.

I had our destination in mind.  During my stay in the area, nobody had occupied it.  A thorough check of the structure found no splintering supports or framework, and there was no crumbling masonry.

Oh, neat, she’s giving them a place to live separate from the Hive.

Wait, didn’t the one with the thick accent talk about a “neighbor”?

The second Japanese guy spoke up.  He was in his early twenties and his accent was thick enough that I didn’t realize he was speaking English at first.  He pronounced ‘girl’ more like ‘gurru’.

That’s pretty thick.

“Other day, girl was knocking on neighbor’s door, talking about you.  Said you was good boss.  Nice, generous, fair.  But we think that means you weak, before, not so much of that now.”

I like this sense of payoff.

I shook my head slowly.  “No.  I’m not weak.”

“We know you has trouble with Lung and ABB before.  Not friendly.  But they gone, we still here.”

I suppose that means they no longer really identify as “ABB”, though they’ve still been shaped by their experiences in the gang.

“You should know this isn’t about preying on the people in my territory.  Just the opposite.  If you’re looking for an excuse to bully the people around here, you’re in the wrong place.  The only people we fuck with are our enemies.”

Good to get that out in the open where everyone can see it, yeah.

There were nods from all three.

“No starting violence, no drug dealing, no prostitution, no threatening people, and no drug use or drinking unless it’s a hundred percent limited to your own time.”

Gonna take a bit of getting used to, maybe, but these seem like reasonable terms.

He didn’t look like he had much muscle, but I wasn’t about to comment on that.  If nothing else, I was a little too stunned at what he was offering to say anything witty.  “Pretty much.”

It makes a load of sense. Skitter’s a villain who lacks muscle willing to work for a supervillain. They’re muscle who lack a villain to work for. The pieces fit together beautifully.

I wonder what Lung would think if he learned that parts of his gang had gone to the annoying bug kid for work.

“We heard you took on Mannequin,” the girl said.  “That’s ballsy.”

It really was.

“Thanks,” I said, in my driest tone.  Stupid as it was, that statement meant something to me.  Nobody had really congratulated me since my fight with Mannequin.  I hadn’t congratulated myself.

Yeah, see? It was a victory.

It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that they respected me for what had happened with Mannequin.  A victory was a victory, but people had gotten hurt, I’d gotten hurt.

Yes, and thanks to you, way fewer people got hurt than if you hadn’t stepped in.

It was torture to actually get my limbs into the legs and sleeves and zip up, and to contort myself to attach my armor.  Especially doing it quickly.  I ended up enlisting Brian’s help with the armor at my shoulders and back.

This is more relatable than it has any right to be.

I could feel Sierra’s steady but insistent tapping on the cube all the while.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

Seems like whatever the people around her want, they’re pressuring her.

They were a short distance down the beach, but they started walking towards us a little bit after we entered the storm drain, and met us halfway.

How did they know to start walking?

Sierra was in the company of a pair of Japanese boys and a petite Chinese girl with a pierced nose and a thousand-yard stare.  There was a degree of attitude coming from them that was all too familiar.  Gang members.  Of course.

I should’ve known the ABB wouldn’t stay entirely irrelevant.

Just because Lung and Bakuda were no longer around didn’t mean there wouldn’t be scraps of the ABB in the area.  They wouldn’t be liked, but they were there, they were equipped for trouble and criminal activity was all they knew.

Yeeah. And if they find another leader, they might come back in force.

“No, I don’t think he would.  Her talents are too valuable for him.  But that doesn’t explain your attitude lately.”

I shook my head.  “I-”

I stopped and raised one hand.  Sierra was outside, not too far away, and there was a small group of people around her.  What had gotten my attention was the fact that she was tapping her finger against the origami cube.  She’d wanted to signal me without doing anything overt, maybe.

…um. Citizens, perhaps, wanting Skitter’s attention and going to the redhead they’d seen going around gathering information for her?

The tapping would then be because she didn’t want Skitter to attack the people.

Or without my calling a swarm down to her location.

“-Something’s going on outside.  Come with?”

Sounds good.

Brian nodded.

I headed upstairs and got my costume on in record time.  I couldn’t help but note how dusty it was from last night’s encounter, and how the one arm was still crusty with old containment foam.

Alright, that confirms it – it wasn’t called attention to (maybe meaning it’s happened before, offscreen), but Sierra has now seen Skitter out of costume.

Brian shook his head.  “No.  There’s got to be more to it.  You’ve been distant, driven, and you’ve done some very un-Taylor-like things in the past few weeks.”

She does focus ridiculously hard on Dinah. It’s not far-fetched that it’s partially a form of denial about the other things driving her.

I ate some of the plain brown rice.  Could I tell him?

“There is more to it.  Lisa and I talked it over after the Endbringer thing.  She doesn’t like the Dinah situation either, even if she’s more willing to roll with it.”

Where is this going?

“Right.  Just for the record, I’m not in love with the kidnapping and confinement of some kid, either.”

And yeah, it’s much the same case with Grue, though he’s even less willing to do something about it.

I nodded.  “So Lisa suggested the deal.  But knowing Coil, and from what Lisa says, and from the way Coil framed it when I posed the deal to him and just my gut, I- we don’t think he’s going to let her go.”

Oh right, I forgot she was the one behind that idea.

But yeah, good to hear she’s not completely fooled.

I shook my head, “I can’t.”

“Right.  Just like you rejected Hookwolf’s suggestion that our groups take a break.  I won’t say that hearing you muttering to yourself was the entire reason I refused his offer, or even half the reason, but it was a factor, and I think I deserve answers for going up to bat for you.

Coming clean about how much she wants to help Dinah might be healthy for Taylor, though I doubt Brian will approve.

What’s going on?”

“I made a deal with Coil.”

Brian folded his arms, much as I was doing.  “What deal?”

“I made a deal with the devil.”

Although judging by my ToC “titles”, the devil was Kaiser.

“He said that if I can prove my services are worth it, he’ll release Dinah.”

Which he’s not going to do. Coil can set the bar however high he wants, and unless she changes her mind significantly, Skitter probably isn’t going to go through with leaving Coil’s employ if he doesn’t release Dinah – especially since neither party set a timeframe for it – because it feels too much like giving up and failing Dinah, and I think Coil has that figured out.

It’s a sucker’s deal that allows Coil to put lots of pressure on Skitter with no real risk of her going “fuck this shit I’m out”.

Noting my pain, Brian commented, “I can’t help but worry you’re self destructing, Taylor.  You can’t go up against the Nine to protect people you don’t even know.”

That’s what the heroes do. And even then, two out of the five heroes we’ve seen actually encounter a Slaughterhouse member without that Slaughterhouse member coming specifically to nominate them ran away without a fight, and at least two of the others didn’t have that option.

“I can.  I’ll manage.”

“How much sleep did you get last night?”

He’s onto her.

“Dunno.  Two or three hours, but I slept in.  What time is it?”

“Nine.”

“Maybe four hours?”

Better than nothing, but not enough.

“You’re going to run yourself into the ground at this rate.  Or get yourself killed.  Take your time.  Go on the defensive, tell your people to stay out of trouble and avoid drawing the Nine’s attention, rest.  You can work on this territory thing over the next few weeks, instead of days.” 

Grue is right. Taylor has been working herself way too hard, and still feels guilty about not working harder.

Taylor is decent at understanding people, but she tends to ignore the potential for there to be sides to them that she doesn’t see, and she’s had a history of a very black and white view of people that still hasn’t quite left her. She’s just stopped equating that divide with the hero/villain divide.