“I don’t want to leave just yet.”

“Merchants are throwing a big bash tonight, so I doubt they’ll be attacking your territory.  In fact, I’m wondering if they were attacking your territory to get cash or stuff to barter at the event as much as they were responding to your claim.”

Huh, yeah, I suppose if they already had plans to attack the area, that explains why it happened so quickly.

“Maybe.”

“And Chosen aren’t a threat right now?  They haven’t said or done anything yet?”

So sign of them yet, no. I suppose they’ll be an issue eventually, though.

“Not yet, no.  Haven’t run into any.”

“Grue and Imp are probably going to want to wind down and go on the defensive later today.  You can have one of them babysit your territory if you’re worried.  You have no good reason to refuse.  Come on, let’s go see what a Merchant’s party is all about.”

Oh, so the bash isn’t just a reason Taylor can come out, but also the reason why she should – it’s what Tattle was thinking of as a source of information.

Attending a Merchant meeting, presumably in civilian clothing… this could be interesting.

“Boy scout badges?”

“From what I can gather, you get one for attending one of the Merchants’ ‘events’.  Colors are supposed to represent what the each one was about.

Ah, fair enough.

It translates to a kind of respect, showing you’re loyal, whatever.”

That does makes more sense than rewarding them simply for sheer brutality.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“And neither am I, to be honest,” she replied.  “And that bothers me.

I’m not sure what’s not to understand here, but it’s not like I have any right to get on these girls’ cases about not understanding one thing I (think I) did.

So in the interests of getting intel and maybe getting a lead on this missing boy of yours, do you think you could get away from your territory, tonight, to join me in figuring this out?”

I was going to use this quote to comment on Tattle saying “missing boy” without Skitter having mentioned his gender, but then I remembered that we just skipped over Taylor telling Lisa everything.

The point I was making still stands, though, even if it doesn’t apply right here – I like when Lisa’s dialogue has her casually mentioning details she hasn’t actually been told.

“Hmmm,” she replied, “I’m getting the impression you’re a little further along than the rest of us.”

“impression”, you say? 😉

“If that’s the case, then that’s great.  I want to be in Coil’s good books.”

“I want you to be too.  You know I’m here to help if you need it.”

That’s good to know. I hope Taylor needs it often…

“Yeah.  That’s why I’m calling, actually.  I need to find someone.”

Ooh, good thinking. Where’s Bryce?

“Do tell.”

I gave her the rundown on everything Sierra had told me.  She stopped me when I got to the bit about the armbands.

“Those aren’t for rank,” she informed me.  “But you’re not wrong in saying they’re like status.  They’re more like… boy scout badges.”

Oh, huh. You get them for feats, then.

I feel pretty safe in guessing that a lot of those “feats” involve killing people, or worse.

“He’s doing okay?”

“No problems, last I heard.  You?  I saw that cloud of bugs earlier.”

I guess Tattle’s territory isn’t too far away. Though to be fair, the cloud would be visible from a pretty good distance.

“Made a big play.  Everyone here should know this is my territory, now.  

Yeah, a “play” is a good way to describe what she did, even if she does mean it in the sense of a “play for power”, a move in the game of capes.

Merchants tested the waters, I dealt with it.  Remains to be seen if this works out in the long run.”

The biggest problem I see with Skitter’s way of going about this – something I thought of one of these last few days but forgot about before getting around to posting about – is that she needs to sleep. Normally that wouldn’t be that much of a problem as long as her enemies didn’t identify her sleep schedule and exploit that to attack while she herself was off-guard (something which her eventual employees (drones?) might help mitigate the damage from), but here’s the thing: Taylor promised her subjects that she’d keep the insects from bothering people in the ways insects normally do. How is she going to do that while asleep?

To be fair, she has controlled bugs while unconscious before, to the hilarious distaste of John Cleese. But that might just make things worse, depending on what her subconscious gets up to at night.

I’m trying to see if there’s any useful tidbits of info I can pick up, and if there’s maybe a way to fuck with all these guys at around the same time, so they know there’s nowhere left to go.

Of course she wants to fuck with them. 😛

In the meantime, I’m helping Grue out, figuring out where he’s got Merchants hiding in his area.”

Nice.

I dialed Lisa next.

“Hey, Boardwalk empress,” she answered me.

I prefer to call her a queen, for obvious reasons, but empress is also fitting.

“Tattletale.  How’s it coming?”

“It’s not.  I’m gathering intel on the enemies in my territory.  A few have migrated my way in response to what the rest of you are doing, regrouping.

Ah, I guess that’s the price of waiting – the enemies still think it’s a place they can go.

I stood from the armchair, stretched, and pulled on my mask.  I bent down to pick up my mug, then headed downstairs to check on Sierra.  She was still sleeping, but I’d known that. 

Did you have bugs on her?

I’d felt secure about removing my mask only because I had bugs on the girl, to keep track of her.  I’d know the second she stirred.

Of course she did. Not sure why I even wondered about the security of taking off her mask. I really should’ve predicted this.

I went into the kitchen before sending a text to Coil:

Merchant burn victim & other wounded near Sandstone & Harney.  Send medic?

How thoughtful. Plus, helping them out like this could be a bit of salt on the wound. “Hey, I trounced you completely and with ease. Have some medics to help you get over your crushing defeat at my hands.”

No use having the woman die from any complications from her injuries.  Besides, maybe he could get her to offer up information in exchange for her freedom.

Well, this too.

The human shapes were less efficient than a regular swarm, but I imagined the psychological effect was that much greater.

Oh, absolutely. Not much quite like fighting humanoids made out of bugs to give you nightmares.

A swarm of bugs was something you could encounter any day.  An uncannily human figure that you couldn’t hurt with any conventional weapon, who threatened incredible pain if it got close enough?  It was something my enemies would remember, and it was something they could tell others about.

Yeah, sounds about right.

I gathered the swarm into a figure that stood next to the woman with the burned feet and her friend.  I drew more and more bugs into the swarm, bloating it and drawing it up to the point where I couldn’t make it any larger, without the bottom half giving way.

I gauged it to be somewhere close to twelve feet in height.

“You gonna keep trying to fuck with us, pal?”

Then I let it fall on top of them.  That polished off group two.

Niiice.

One of her friends finally stepped forward to help her, grabbing her under the armpits and dragging her ten feet down the road to a spot where more water had collected.

Case in point.

Together, they worked to put out the flames, dousing her bundled jeans into the water.  I could maybe have stopped him, driven him away, but my interest was more on spooking them than causing grievous physical harm.

Yeah, that’s fair.

I wouldn’t lose much sleep over burning her with the things she’d intended to use on others, but I wouldn’t stop her from putting herself out.

It’s more about doing it in the first place.

Apparently seeing the woman get set on fire by the swarm had done its job in unnerving my enemies.  The group scattered, and I let them run.

See ya! Maybe soon, if Taylor’s as kind to you as she was to the guy from the eight-person group.

One by one, I took them down by creating the human shaped swarms and then attacking them.  Some fought, others ran, but each of the Merchants succumbed eventually, choking on the bugs or losing all self-control in the face of the pain the attacking swarm inflicted.

Excellent work, Skitter. 🙂