“So you want to be aggressive instead?  Suffer a fast death?”

“Yes to the first part, no to the second.  Look, they’re good because they’re experienced.  Jack has been doing this for years.  He knows the exact balance he needs to strike, to be unpredictable enough that we can’t plan against them, but clever enough that we can’t catch them off guard.”

So… how exactly are you planning to catch them off guard with this?

“But you want to try.  To catch them off guard, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

And your argument for why you should is because that’s difficult?

Well, I suppose that’s the same argument that was made for going to the moon, and that was a big success. Sign me up!

“It’s suicide.  Like, what are the odds you’re going to make it through a third round?  If we have a fifty-fifty chance of dying in a given confrontation, that’s, what, a one in eight chance?”

If you assume three confrontations, yes.

“You’re better at math than I am.  Sure.  Except we’re not going to fight them head on.  Tell me, what are the limits on your abilities?”

“There really aren’t any.  If it makes sense, if it’s self-sustaining, with organs and an energy supply, it’s easier on me.  I don’t need to take up as much of the load with personal effort.  Bigger and denser forms are more taxing, too.”

Interesting. So she can do things that make no sense, but it’s more tiring. And she can make the forms gargantuan, but again, more tiring.

She’s got an insanely strong power, it’s just a matter of being able to use it without tiring herself out immediately.

Genesis was the first one to arrive upstairs, carried by one of her remotely controlled images, a crude rendering of a man who draped her in a chair and then faded as she woke.

Hmm.

The way her creations look cartoonish, the way some of them are “crude renderings”, does she essentially “draw” the creations in her mind (which is then translated into reality) when she makes them? Does the visual complexity affect how long it takes to form them?

“I couldn’t put out any of the major fires,” she said.  For someone who had just spent four fifths of the day sleeping, she looked exhausted.

Her power is probably quite energy-draining, and I doubt the coma her regular body is put into actually gets her any real rest.

“Thank you for trying.”  I took the wire cutters to the inside of my burned costume’s leggings.  Each squeeze got me only half an inch of cut material.

This might take some time.

“What next?”

“I’ve outlined a basic plan with Grue.  He contacted the others.  They should be arriving shortly, and we’ll all discuss it together.  Tattletale doesn’t think Burnscar’s going to come back anytime soon, but I’ve laid out spider-silk tripwires over the area, just in case.”

Oh, nice, I’d be down for catching up with the southern Undertravelers, hear what they’ve had to deal with. And some planning, though who knows if we’ll actually get to see that part. It might be better if we don’t, given the Unspoken Plan Guarantee.

Maybe it’s going to get interrupted by Imp showing up with news of whatever deal Cherish wanted to make. Hell, maybe even with Cherish herself in tow, though I can’t imagine anyone would appreciate that even after learning Cherish is willing to strike a deal. I don’t think Imp is as stupid as that would imply, either – it would be a super effective trap if Cherish was lying. “Hey Imp, help me walk right into a gathering of all your friends so I can kill them before we even enter the room.”

The disinfectant virtually hissed as it touched my burns.  I applied it liberally, then got out the gauze and antibiotic cream.

It hurt as much as the lingering effects of Bakuda’s pain grenade, but there was also the knowledge that it would take forever to heal.

At least unless you get Panacea to reconsider and join you.

I wouldn’t be able to wear skin-tight leggings over the injured area.

I suppose that’s a bit of a problem. 

Bastards.  This pain was nothing compared to what they’d subjected my people to.  How many people had lost parents, loved ones, friends?  Homes?  I couldn’t even complain to myself about the burn without feeling guilty.

It’s not misery olympics.

You’re allowed to feel pain even if there are others who are feeling more pain, and you are not responsible for their pain. You suffered your pain while doing your best to prevent that. That’s nothing to feel guilty about.

“Want help?”

She glared at me.  Answer enough.

This is what Taylor didn’t do earlier. Ask.

I headed upstairs and stripped my mannequin of the costume I’d largely completed.  Then I removed my rain boots and began the torturous process of peeling out of the costume I was wearing.

Oh yeah, what did you end up doing with that? Did you put on the one you were making for Tattletale?

I’d put off investigating the damage in favor of finding Bitch sooner.

Ah. I guess it wasn’t as damaged as I was picturing.

Also, whoops, I just reread the first sentence of this paragraph and realized that no, of course she didn’t put on the one she was making for Tattletale, she just said that had been on the mannequin.

Not to be confused with being worn by Mannequin, though that’s an amusing mental image.

One of these days, I was going to run up against something strange and assume it was her, only to be unpleasantly surprised.

To be fair, that is a possibility.

I drew words and symbols with the bugs.  Shortly after, the flow of the water stopped and the consistency of her body began to break down.

Time to wakey wakey!

She was on her way back.

Charlotte had taken the kids away, so my lair was empty as we made our way inside.

It’s like Burnscar, empty inside.

…

Oh my cod, is there an ironic stealth joke in play with Burnscar? Has she lost her spark?

Bitch assessed the area and then headed into the bathroom, going for the first aid kit.

How are first aid stocks in Brockton Bay doing these days? I mean, first there’s Leviathan’s damage to the city, then there’s the Shattering, and then there’s the other damage the Nine is causing…

My bugs found Genesis a few blocks away.  Or, rather, they found something that approximated a blend between a slug and a rabbit.

That sounds…

That sounds adorable. At least the way I’m imagining it, with a rabbit’s head and fur on the body shape of a slug. The other way around might not be as adorable.

My bugs identified two bulbous eyes, two tentacles or floppy ears and a body that hugged the ground.

Yay, I got it right and it’s adorable!

Although the presence or absence of fur could still have a lot to say about that.

The insects I had resting on the surface of the water could feel it flowing up and to the sides of the slug.  A small mouth jetted streams of it at the fires of a building near her.  I assumed it was Genesis.  Educated guess.

Ahaha!

Taylor is a pretty serious character, but I love when her dry wit comes out in the narration.

“You had me at no holds barred,” she growled, rising from her crouch. 

Good to know you’re on board. 🙂

I didn’t dare to open my mouth, not with the risk of angering her and changing her mind.  I nodded instead.

Good call. You know how she feels about people talking too much anyway.

Together, we limped back to my lair.  Every step I took was a chore.  Where Grue and I had supported each other, Bitch didn’t offer me anything.

There’s still some distance to go, but with Bitch opening up a bit near the end here, I’m finally beginning to believe the friendship can be cultivated post-Extermination.

Also, while I think this line supports my point, it does also remind me of one thing that could be argued to be a borderline friendly gesture from Bitch: In Hive, when she let Taylor borrow her coat in order to hide her marks from being held by half-dragon Lung.

It bothered me a little; we could have ridden Sirius if we’d cooperated to help each other onto his back, but that wasn’t apparently in the cards.

…still some distance to go.

She’d spent years on her own, on the streets with only the company of her dogs, running any time a cop or cape came after her.  I itched to ask her if she’d suddenly had an increase in the amount of trouble she faced before she came to Brockton Bay.

Hmm. That does sound like something Coil might do. Stage more trouble to manipulate her into accepting his offer.

Trouble that could be precipitated by a certain ambitious supervillain?

No, it wasn’t the time.

Yeah, may want to hold off on that for now.

“You know that joining the Nine would get you the opposite of that.  It wouldn’t be the kind of power that gets you left alone.  It would be a life of being constantly chased, always in the company of people who are ten times as manipulative and two-faced as you think I am.”

And constantly running into trouble, on purpose.

“I know,” she spat.

See, I’ve been waiting for someone to confront Bitch about this, and now that it’s kind of happening, I actually think it’s no longer necessary? In-universe, anyway. From a story perspective, I do think this needed to be seen.

She picked up Bentley, then adjusted her grip to touch his nose with one hand.

Boop.

Whatever.  Down to brass tacks.  I gave her a second to cool down, then spoke, “They killed your dog, hurt Bentley, killed my people and torched my territory.  I want to take these fuckers down, no holds barred, and we’re going to need your help if we want to pull it off.  Screw going on the defensive, I-”

Oh yeah, they really do need Bitch. She’s got the strongest offensive capabilities of the Undersiders, and while the Travelers have some good offensive powers too, they can’t afford to spare that potential if they can help it.