It was exhilarating, the boat ride.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair, the slight turbulence as the boat bounced on the short waves.

Sounds like a small motorboat. There goes the yacht idea, unless Hookwolf just happens to have parked it elsewhere and this is taking them out to it.

It wasn’t that different from how I had enjoyed riding Bitch’s dogs, and there was none of that primal, deep-seated worry that the hulking monster I was riding would turn around and snap my face off.

I mean, normally that wouldn’t be an issue with motorboats, but look at the world Taylor’s living in. There could very well be someone around with the power to bring boats to life and give them faces.

I’d almost think I had been destined to fly, based on how thoroughly I enjoyed myself, and that it was only bad luck that I’d gotten other powers instead… except I remembered flying with Laserdream as the Endbringer attacked, and that hadn’t been the most enjoyable experience.

Hah! To be fair, there’s a bit of a difference between hanging precariously and uncomfortably from a flying object and being unaffected by gravity yourself.

That might have been a special circumstance; I’d been dealing with the fact that I’d had a broken arm, I’d recently puked my guts out, I’d been soaking wet, and an Endbringer had been working on wiping my hometown and everyone I cared about from the face of the planet.

That too. Most things are probably not that enjoyable during that sort of situation. Like this one time I was watching this sitcom I liked while my house burned down around me. By the end of the episode, I was feeling kinda down, very sweaty and a little bit charred, even though it was almost objectively a really good episode.

I’d spent nearly sixteen years in Brockton Bay, living a half-hour’s walk away from the ocean and I couldn’t remember ever being on a boat.

Which is not for lack of trying on Danny’s part.

Well, I mean, he probably wasn’t trying to get Taylor on a boat, that would probably be much easier. But he was trying to get a boat running that Taylor would’ve gone on at some point. Probably soon after he got it running, to celebrate.

So, anyway, does this mean the meeting is taking place on a boat?

How sad was that?

Hehe. Maybe just a little.

But hey, I live near marble mines and I’ve never had the chance to mine marble… okay, bad analogy 😛

Also I guess the boat she’s clearly leading up to here might just be the means of transportation to the meeting spot, but I think it’d be cooler to have Hookwolf inviting his fellow villains to a personal yacht or something. It would certainly be fancier than the last villain meeting.

Heh, or maybe they’ll all have to cram into a single rowboat in the middle of the bay.

I mean, I was sure I’d been on a boat before.  My parents had to have taken me on the ferry when I was a baby or toddler.  I just didn’t remember any of it.  My parents were introverts, by and large, and their idea of an outing had been more along the lines of a trip down the Boardwalk, a visit to the Market or going to an art gallery or museum.

Sounds kinda nice. 🙂

Maybe once in a while we’d go to something more thrilling like a fair or baseball game, but no… this was the first time I could remember being out on the water.

How about swimming? Did they at least teach you, or let the school teach you, how to swim?

Now I’m imagining a much happier Danny swimming a slow front crawl alongside mini-Taylor. Maybe her mother too, swimming happily on the other side. And little Taylor, maybe 8-9 years old, swimming awkwardly in the middle with a big goofy grin…

Plague 12.2

Villains and slaughters and meetings, oh my!

Howdy! Krixwell here, back again for more Worm. 🙂

Last time, Taylor took care of a rat infestation and learned that Alec has been nominated for the Slaughterhouse Nine, along with others, and that Hookwolf has called in to a villain meeting.

This ought to be interesting. My predictions haven’t really changed since the end of the last chapter: In short, Hookwolf taking the initiative, Kaiser being gone and Skidmark being more socially powerful may cause some interesting differences between this meeting and the one in Hive. Oh, and any lingering conflict there might be between the E44s. Also, the fact that tensions are higher between Coil and each of the E44s than they were between Coil and E88 at the time of the first meeting, though I’m sure Coil will remain as affably evil as ever.

Maybe we’ll meet some new villains too, like we did in 5.1? 5.1 introduced some of my favorite characters outside the Undersiders – maybe this chapter could repeat that feat?

Incidentally, it’d be kinda fun if a hero with a personal stake in the Slaughterhouse situation somehow found out about this meeting and decided to attend. Maybe not Armmaster, since he’s under house arrest and probably still recovering from Mannequin’s attack, but perhaps Panacea? I’d be much more interested to see her than Army anyway.

Without further ado, let’s see how this goes!