Group one down.

I finished my tea, then made a face.  The teabag had leaked grit, and some had settled into the bottom of my cup.  Bitter.

Eesh.

I put the empty cup down at the base of my chair, and then I turned my attention to the second group.

Alright, so are they up to anything yet?

He was halfway down an alley when I drew the ambient bugs from the vicinity into a loose humanoid shape, not as dense as the others.  Still, seeing it stopped him in his tracks.

“Hi. Yeah, you’re not going anywhere.”

He turned to retreat the way he’d come, only to find another swarm coalescing into a second figure at the other end of the alley.  His head whipped around as he realized he had no escape routes left, and then he screamed, a primal, despairing sound.

Taylor’s doing a really good job here so far. If this keeps up with the other group, I think it’s more likely that the Slaughterhouse will show up as antagonists later in the Arc, as dealing with the Merchants seems easier than one might expect in this part of the story.

I mean, sure, Skidmark and the other parahuman Merchants could be a bit more of a challenge, but still.

The swarm figures moved towards him at a glacial pace, with more bugs joining them every second, to give them more mass and more raw attacking power. 

What did I tell you? Skitter totally had a good sense of theatrics.

His composure cracked before they even reached him, and he charged headlong into the swarm that had been at the far end of the alley.  Bugs tore into him, pinching and stabbing him, and he made it nearly to the edge of my power’s range before his legs buckled.

Damn, not bad.

He landed on top of a pile of the trash that the nearby building’s residents had been stacking in the alleyway, and the swarm started mauling him.

Pleasant.

That left only one.  He dropped into a crouch, his hands on his head, and looked frantically around for some kind of escape route.

Yeeah, I think this one gets the message.

Let him go to tell the story? Nah, it’s not like Taylor’s going to kill the rest or anything, and who knows what she’s going to do with the larger group.

So I gave him one.

Alright, maybe she will do that anyway. Or maybe this is just another trap.

The swarm-figures parted enough that he had a chance to retreat.  It took him ten seconds to notice it, and another few seconds to build up the courage to make a run for it.

He bolted.  Seeing the general mass of insects down the road, he decided to turn into a series of alleyways.

So far, so good.

I let him run for a minute.

Ah, yeah, she’s totally playing with him.

The remaining four Merchants in the first group exchanged muttered words, some kind of plan.

Oh, good, reinforcement that this was the eight-person group. I was a little worried that I’d been right to have it the other way around, correctly predicted the eight-person group being revealed to be the Slaughterhouse and looked like a complete idiot (even moreso than I already did) by discounting it as a false alarm due to catching myself on a “mistake” I hadn’t actually made.

Then three of them broke for it, each headed in a different direction.

I don’t think that’s gonna work, sorry guys.

So the larger group hasn’t really done anything yet. Are they waiting for the smaller group?

I wasn’t sure what outcome they expected.  A mass of bugs caught each of them, and they all went down, limbs flailing, screaming.

Yeah, one of the cool things about swarms is that multiple parts of them can act at once…

Unease gave way to panic as the group realized they were trapped.  A woman shoved a man into the nearest swarm, trying to use him to clear the way, but she only got two more steps before the wasps, black flies, mosquitoes and hornets caught up to her.

Wow, rude.

She violently swung her arms around herself in a futile attempt to fight off the bugs, and succeeded only in throwing herself off-balance and falling to the ground.

Good jorb!

The spiders, ants, centipedes, millipedes, beetles and all of the other crawling parts of the swarm rolled over her, burying her beneath their mass before she could stand.

So that’s three or four down of this eight-person group. Nice.

That certainly helped wake me up a bit, though.

She was letting them know that trouble was near.  I noted that she was holding a plastic tank of gasoline, if the topographic map I was getting from my swarm-sense was right, and the box in her other hand could easily have been matches.  That wasn’t good.

Yeah, no, nothing about these eight being here is good.

How long until Taylor realizes that one of the figures is oddly shaped, like a mannequin?

Still, her group had yet to do anything.  I kept an eye on them and waited.

Hm, biding their time, I guess. Maybe waiting to see if Skitter will attack first?

Someone in the first group made a run for it, rushing for the space between two of the swarm-figures that surrounded his group.  He didn’t make it.  The swarms both intercepted him, and he went down, howling in pain.

Nice try.

Wait, hang on, I think I got the groups switched up. The group surrounded by the swarm figures is the eight-person one, and the singing person is in the larger group.

Alright, I think that was a false alarm on my part, then. I don’t think the Slaughterhouse would act like the surrounded group has, nor that Taylor could take out two of them already.

That ain’t a subdivision of the Merchants.

Hello there, Slaughterhouse Nine.

A woman in the group was singing, loud enough that her voice would be carrying to nearby residents.

Huh.

…

shit

shit shit shit shit shit

FUCK