“I’m going to be upstairs, cleaning up the balcony and the other rooms.  Give me a shout when the rice is done, or if you find anything breakfast-ish that’s edible.”

“Okay.”

I guess that’s all she’s getting for now.

I headed up to my bathroom and began to sweep up.  I deployed bugs to help me find the shards that the broom wasn’t catching.

Handy!

I occupied myself with my other bugs as well.  I went out of my way to avoid using the spiders I’d employed to fight Mannequin, drawing from bugs in the streets and surrounding area instead.  I sent the weakest, smallest and most useless of the bugs to my spiders for a morning meal, then fed the non-spiders who were a little less reliant on protein.

Breakfast is served!

With the other nearby bugs, I started collecting the smallest pieces of glass throughout the house.

Using bugs to help do this is a very good idea, especially since she can multitask so effectively with them. It can help her get the cleaning done like a hundred times faster.

“Really, Armsmaster?  Is he that bad?”

“Bad enough that Mannequin wants him to be the ninth member of their group.”

That should be some food for thought.

‘Course, might want to avoid mentioning that you just sent Charlotte to someone with the same distinction. Though it’s a little different since Alec was nominated out of spite.

Sierra’s eyes widened.

I figured I wouldn’t mention that two of my teammates, including the one I’d sent Charlotte to meet, had also been nominated.  Regent had only been nominated out of spite, and Bitch… I wasn’t sure what the story was there.

Ahaha! I just said that, Taylor!

Well, I did deliberately leave Bitch out of it, but still.

Speaking of her, it seems Taylor is giving her the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if she’d still do that if Regent hadn’t been nominated.

Given recent events, I wasn’t sure I could blame her for thinking along those lines.

“No, that’s not exactly right,” I responded.  “Long story short, once upon a time, I wanted to be one of the good guys.”

“Then I didn’t. The end.”

“What happened?”

“Took me a while, but I decided I’d rather have the likes of Tattletale and Grue at my back instead of siding with the sort of people who follow Armsmaster.”

Yeah, though a lot of those people do seem to be a bit more decent than Vriskmaster turned out to be.

And, hell, even he seems to be getting a redemption of sorts, with more recent chapters showing his better side.

But none of that is stuff Taylor knows.

“Say it.”

“It wasn’t last night, but I overheard something at the hospital.  Something involving you and Armsmaster?”

Oh shit.

Time for Sierra to learn some backstory, perhaps?

I sighed, suddenly reminded of how weary I felt.  I saw her expression fall.  She said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No.  It’s fine.  What did you hear?”

“That you betrayed your team, and that you’d wanted to be a hero but, um,” she paused, “Couldn’t?”

That’s… not quite what happened? Although I guess it works with a certain definition of “couldn’t”.

She’d changed her mind about how she was going to finish speaking.  What had she left out, and had she stopped herself from saying it for my sake or for her own self-preservation, not wanting to piss off the villain?  I wanted to be a hero and I failed?

Hmm. Perhaps.

It’s still not quite accurate, unless you mean “failed to resist the temptation of actually having friends for once”.

I smiled a little.  “Well, that’s good.”

She smiled back.  “You know, you’re not what I expected.”

…fuck. I think I might ship it.

Ships aside, though, this is a very good line. Taylor might take it the wrong way, though, since she’s concerned about her subordinates not seeing her as a strong, inhuman leader.

But I don’t think a strong, inhuman leader is what she needs to be. She needs to be a competent, human leader.

There’s a difference between strong and competent.

“I’m not what I expected, frankly,” I said.  I turned my attention back to the cabinet, found the dustpan and stood up.

Heh.

A good line answered with another good line.

“That reminds me-”  She paused.  “Nevermind.”

…hm?

“Nobody listened to me at first when I tried to warn them.  It was only when Battery showed up at the hospital and confirmed that the Slaughterhouse Nine were around that people started trying to prepare, but there wasn’t a lot we could do in those ten minutes.

Go Battery!

So wait, why did she show up right then? A result of the meeting, maybe? It’s not like the PRT didn’t know the Slaughterhouse Nine were around before, though. They could’ve done this earlier, though they’d risk causing a bit of panic.

Unless either Battery knew about the incoming attack (possibly due to someone from the Slaughterhouse warning Armmaster, or due to Skitter’s warnings to the civilians) or they agreed to it at the meeting, there’d be no difference prompting the PRT to do this now as opposed to before.

There were a lot of people in the hospital, and a lot of equipment, monitors and displays, lots of windows.  Everyone who could got under their beds, and people put mattresses against the windows in rooms where there were people who couldn’t move.”

Ooh, nice.

The equipment getting busted would still kill a lot of people on its own, but at least they could minimize the danger from the windows.

“But they were okay?”

“Most?” Sierra frowned. “I couldn’t really tell.  It was chaotic, lots of people running around, equipment failing.  Battery tried to grab me to ask me how I knew what was happening, and I used the chaos to slip away, spent the rest of the night in my parent’s room, hoping she wouldn’t spot me.”

I wonder what Battery would do if Sierra told her the truth, that she was warned by Skitter. I do think that would reflect positively on Skitter, at least.

“And they’re okay?  Your parents?”

“They’re okay.”

That’s good to hear. And I guess Bryce is okay too, or Sierra would be far more upset than this. Same thing would probably be the case if her parents weren’t okay, for that matter.

“The father?”

“He should know what I mean.”

“Okay.”  She met my eyes as she responded.  Better.   I wrote the address down for her, then watched as she headed off to pull on her shoes and make her way off to the cellar exit.

Regent: “Huh. I didn’t know the dork was religious.”

“And me?” Sierra asked.

“Go to the basement, get a box of supplies, and bring it up.  There should be a propane stove in there.  Cook up some rice, and then start cleaning out the cupboards.

Ah, so Sierra gets the cleaning duty.

Wear gloves, and focus on picking out the stuff we can keep from the stuff that needs to be thrown out.  Use the box from the supplies to hold some of the extra trash if you need to.”

Makes sense. There’s still going to be a couple things that weren’t ruined by the Shattering in there. Like bottles made of hard plastic.

“Okay.”

I walked over to the corner to find a broom and dustpan.

Are you going to help with the cleaning too?

“You’re cleaning up too?”

“Yeah.  You were at the hospital last night, right?  How did things go?”

I would very much like to know that too.

…are your parents alive?

Well, I’d have to make use of them anyways.  My focus on the cupboards and the damage inside, I asked, “Charlotte, you up for a job?”

Cleaning duty? I don’t suppose it’s as easy as going to the store under these conditions – there’s tons of glass in most stores that carry these sorts of products. Any given food store is going to look a lot like the inside of these cupboards.

“Yeah,” she said, behind me.  When I glanced back at her, she looked away again.  I knew I’d taken some hits, but did I look that bad?

Again, I think this is about communication. She’s clearly still loyal, but I think she has her thoughts about the fact that she wasn’t told this might happen and isn’t sure she can face Skitter with them.

“It’s a bit of a walk, but I need to get up to date on events.  You’ll be going to the territory of a guy named Regent.  He’s a friend, and it’s close.  Tell him about the Mannequin incident, tell him I’m alive, and get details on what happened to Tattletale and the father.”

Oh, I see. She wasn’t literally focusing on the cupboards, that’s just where she was looking.

This is a quite sensible course of action.

Also, “the father” – interesting phrasing there. I’m guessing it’s for Sierra’s sake, so as to not let on which father she’s talking about. Charlotte can probably figure it out fairly easily, though, especially once she talks to Alec.

Opening the cupboard, my hopes of having a solid breakfast to start my day were dashed. Bottles of spices that had been on the same shelf as the teabags had exploded, sending their contents and countless glass shards throughout the cupboard.

Sheesh. Nothing’s working out today, is it.

The cupboard reeked of cinnamon and cumin and various peppers.  They weren’t the only casualties there.  Bottles of cooking supplies had exploded on the upper shelves, and their contents had settled overnight, most of it pooling on the shelves in layers of congealed liquid that were thick with the needle-thin particles of shattered glass.

The fridge, assuming there is one, probably isn’t faring any better. Especially if its shelves were made of glass.

I looked at the pair of them.  Neither spoke, and Charlotte even looked away.

Yeeah, definitely an issue here.

I hated this.  Hated feeling flawed, knowing they saw me that way.  Being bruised, sore and stiff, I was visibly mortal to them.

I don’t think that’s the problem, though.

I hadn’t been able to stop Mannequin from hurting bystanders, or protect and warn my people about Shatterbird.  How were they supposed to respect me as someone in charge?  Sierra was even older than I was.

You did, though. You didn’t do a perfect job of it, no, but you were able to stop him from hurting more bystanders, and you were able to warn at least some of your people about Shatterbird via Charlotte. Hell, you even warned more people on your way to your dad. Sierra and especially Charlotte personally saw you doing everything you possibly could to make a difference, as a leader of the territory and otherwise.

Your standards for yourself are too high.