My internet connection seems to have stopped working for some reason (posting this using mobile data) and shows no sign of coming back right now, so I’m copying the last post into a Word file and stopping here. Fortunately, I was about to stop anyway, as it’s getting quite late and I’m hungry.
See you Wednesday for the next session. 🙂
The battle was still ongoing. Gregor the Snail was here, but unlike the others, he wasn’t operating in Labyrinth’s world. He passed through the walls of the maze, spraying streams of slime at Trainwreck, who had apparently advanced halfway up the stairs by using his hands to help him walk.
Oh. So Labyrinth does have the power to pick and choose who’s affected by her changes. She just hadn’t set Faultline to pass through it for some reason.
Trainwreck retaliated by throwing a chunk of stairs at Gregor with one hand while trying to block the stream of slime with the other.
But do those stairs exist for Gregor?
The section of stairs hit the wall of the maze just in front of Gregor, some of it bouncing over to pass through Gregor. Not real, as far as he was concerned.
Nope. Judging by Hive, he couldn’t even see what Trainwreck thought he was throwing.
What did this look like to Gregor? Was he standing in the mall as it had been, while Trainwreck seemed to stand on thin air? Or was Trainwreck on the ground? I couldn’t parse it.
If I remember correctly, Oni Lee seemed to stand on thin air while affected by Labyrinth’s power… then again, he also teleported and promptly fell down. Was Labyrinth toggling whether the power worked for Oni on and off so that his footing disappeared the moment he teleported to it, only to reappear a moment later?
Sierra had wanted Thomas and his followers to suffer, and I’d agreed to make it happen. I couldn’t do anything about Bryce’s girlfriend or her mom. They were dead, and it had probably been instantaneous and painless. Thomas, though?
Thomas gets to suffer.
Brooks followed my gaze to Thomas. In his accented voice, he asked me, “You want me to bandage him up? Don’t know how much I can do.”
Not much, I’d imagine.
Thomas heard and stopped crawling, dropping onto his belly. He didn’t look toward me, but I knew he was listening.
“yes please”
“It’s fine,” I told Brooks. “Focus on the boy.”
And Thomas gets to have his hopes lifted up and then dropped to the floor to shatter.
He nodded, then helped hold Bryce’s prone form while Minor got a better grip. Thomas didn’t move, react or say anything.
Seems that prompted him to give up crawling for the door.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We ran, and with Brooks keeping one hand on my shoulder to guide me, I glanced behind us to get a sense of what was going on.
And now Taylor stomped on the shards of Thomas’ hopes.
If he’s still alive, that is.
Probably not. I knew that by leaving him here, I might be leaving him here to die, but the chance of him surviving anyways was pretty slim. Besides, bringing him would slow us down, and I wasn’t sure we could afford that.
That is true.
I shook my head a little, as if it could cast away the layers of little justifications and excuses I was putting together.
At least she recognizes her rationalization.
I was searching for a rationale, a reason to leave him behind. Also, maybe, I suspected I was trying to give a reason to the fact that I had almost no sympathy for the man.
I mean… when all this started out, I think I made it pretty clear that I didn’t have much sympathy for just about anyone in the ring who was at this meeting in the first place by their own volition and with full awareness of what it was (the last thing is the point Bryce gets off on, and I don’t have that much more sympathy for him either). To be fair, at the time I didn’t expect it to get quite this gruesome, but still.
I really don’t care for most of those injured or killed in this.
I feel like this says a lot about how thoroughly unsympathetic Wildbow has made this group.
If I was going to leave him there, I’d own up to what I was doing.
This is a good development, though. Taylor is realizing her tendency to rationalize things and taking a conscious step to being more honest to herself.
Brooks helped Minor to get the boy to a standing position, while I watched Thomas struggle on. He was getting weaker, fast. The blood loss had been too severe.
So… just gonna stand there and watch this man die?
I mean, I don’t think you can help him, and whether you should is highly questionable, it’s just that I find this behavior somewhat surprising coming from Taylor.
Skidmark had several parahumans working for him, and I didn’t know all their powers. Maybe Thomas would get care.
Do you really think he’ll make it much further? It sounds like he’s about to collapse completely.
Maybe Skidmark would attend to his people.
Yeah, I’m sorry, Taylor, but no. Just look around you. Remember who ordered this carnage in the first place.
Skidmark doesn’t give a shit.
Brooks stooped down to help Bryce, who had gotten off lightly compared to the others. He was missing a large portion of his right hand, and he’d had the presence of mind to try to loop his belt around the injury to control the blood loss, pulling it tight.
Huh, not bad, Bryce.
He seemed like he’d lose consciousness any second. Brooks retrieved some medical supplies from his backpack and began tending to the boy.
Oh right, we have a medic! Time to work your magic, Brooks.
He’s probably not going to be happy about it considering the kid did willingly enter the fray to escape them, but he’ll do it right.
I watched Thomas struggle towards the door.
Seriously, where are you even trying to go? I’m not sure that door’s gonna help you.
Minor arrived fifteen or twenty seconds after Brooks had started to work on the boy, standing guard while our medic took care of Bryce’s hand.
Nice, looks like Taylor’s maze directions worked decently well.
Scrub’s power had torn through the clusters of Merchants during the fighting, and Bryce’s new ‘family’ was no exception.
Ouch.
The girlfriend was dead, her head and shoulders gone, muscle and fluids flowing out where the flesh had been annihilated.
♪ Head and shoulders, knees and void, knees and void. ♪
The girl’s mother was a goner too. She lay on her back, her face missing. Had she been behind her daughter, holding her, hit by the same blast?
Man, where’s that Greenfire guy from 8.3 when we need him?
Then again, it sounds like this one’s already pretty symmetrical.
‘Thomas’ was still alive, the black man with the scar on his lips. The man who had hurt Sierra’s friend from the church, who had literally torn the guy a new asshole, if I’d gotten Sierra’s meaning right.
It’s a bit of a different thing, morally speaking, when you’re not doing it on an Endbringer.
Thomas crawled slowly for the nearest arch, breathing hard, his face drawn with pain. A slice had been taken out of his arm, shoulder, and a section of his back, as though a guillotine had grazed him from behind.
ouch
I wasn’t quite sure how he hadn’t died yet, with the amount he was bleeding.
Maybe he too is filled with determination.
My power let me get a general map of the people who were still unconscious or prone, and the bugs wouldn’t stand out too much as they checked the bodies.
Makes sense, given bug behavior around corpses.
I went by body types, trying to find people of Bryce’s height and build. The path Trainwreck had opened gave us avenues to two people who could have fit the mark, with a third over the next wall.
Excellent. If it’s any of them, I’m guessing he’s the third.
Good news? The first of the prone bodies I went to was Bryce.
Oh nice.
Bad news, he’s dead or badly injured?
Bad news? He was injured.
Yep.
Not a huge surprise given what he tossed himself into.
I asked him in a low voice, “Trainwreck. Are you still working for Coil, or did you leave?”
I guess she is, huh. Fair enough. It doesn’t actually tell him much about her given that Coil has plenty of employees in civilian guise.
He tensed, and his eyes turned my way, though he couldn’t turn his head with the hardware around it.
Also if he can’t get a good look at her, that helps.
The tensing doesn’t tell me anything, really. He’d have reason to tense up either way.
I stepped back as he used one arm to prop himself up and get a better look at me.
Oh right, arms are a thing.
“No idea what you’re saying,” he said. He gave me a level stare, and I was almost convinced. But I’d seen him in the parking garage when I first found out Coil was the Undersider’s employer.
Good poker face. Handy for moles.
“Right, total nonsense, sorry,” I said. I tried not to show fear as he tried to get to a standing position with his ruined mechanical legs, looming over me. “But if you were working for the man, maybe you could find some excuse to knock over that wall over there…”
Hehe. So that’s your angle.
I pointed at the nearest section of wall.
“You’re fucking nuts,” he told me. He raised his arm, and my legs tensed, ready to leap towards him if he took a swing at us. As big as he was, without him being able to use his legs, being in close would be safer than trying to leap back out of his reach.
So is he saying she’s nuts for suggesting it before going ahead and knocking down the wall for her anyway, or…
He brought his hand down on the wall I’d pointed at to heave himself to an upright position.
That works as a nice excuse.
The wall fell as he rested his weight on it. Using his other hand to help balance himself, he gripped the wall in his heavy gauntlet and flung the section of wall at Faultline and the red-haired girl.
Nice.
So I guess he is working for Coil, then. Either that or Taylor just happened to give him that idea.
The girl turned and stepped out of the way as the wall rotated in the air, bounced between her and Faultline with mere inches gap between them, and slid back down the stairs.
Nice dodge.
He didn’t pay any further attention to us as we ran for the gap he’d opened.
See ya!
Which reminded me of the fact that I needed to get through this maze. Labyrinth’s power was drawing many of the crawling bugs down into the ground as it refurbished the floors and consumed the piles of trash or rubble.
That’s kind of inconvenient.
I still had the bugs on the ceiling, but I didn’t want to give our presence away. Of the relatively few bugs I was willing to use, a share were being used to direct Minor and placing them in strategic locations to get a sense of the layout.
Which leaves not many for other uses should the need arise.
As the maze took shape in my head, I showed Minor the way.
Nice.
I stepped into the clearing and, double checking nobody was in earshot, I approached Trainwreck.
What, are you going to ask him whether he works for Coil or not?
Brooks followed just behind me, watching my back.
Trainwreck didn’t look like much, just going by the face. He had a round face, small eyes, greasy hair tied back in a ponytail and scarred cheeks. He looked like a homeless guy who hadn’t had a shower in a long time.
I guess Coil didn’t provide him one. More evidence he’s not currently working for Coil.
The only thing setting him apart from the Merchants were the gunshot wound near the corner of his jaw and the steam-powered armor that rendered him strong enough to pound the crap out of Armsmaster.
Oh yeah! Good times.
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