She broke the lingering silence, “Coil told me that people would leave me alone if I got powerful enough.  If I had allies, if I had money, if I scared my enemies enough.”

That… doesn’t sound quite right, except maybe the last part.

“When was this?”

“Before I joined the Undersiders.  He didn’t tell me who he was.

Oh! I just figured it was during the talks about the territory plan.

Left me a phone with some cash, then called me a while later.  Fucking words that sounded good.  Learned my lesson.”

Words that sound good. The M.O. of the snake.

Not a snake. THE snake. The snake with legs that tempts the innocent.

Hey, it’d actually be oddly appropriate for Coil to lose his legs somehow while getting his comeuppance.

Bitch had reacted to something I’d said towards the end there, flinched, almost.

The kindred spirit thing, or the social struggles?

I sighed.  This isn’t accomplishing anything.  I looked at my territory.  The plumes of smoke had turned the sky a gray-black in color, some of which glowed faintly orange with the reflected light of the fires.

I mean, this is probably the most important interaction the two of you have ever had, but yeah. It’s kinda fruitless so far, in-universe.

The occasional spark floated through the air from one of the fires that burned around a nearby corner.

The world is in flames. Taylor’s world, anyway.

No.

Skitter’s world.

“You are not my friend,” she didn’t look up at me as she uttered the words.

This seems to imply a certain degree of dishonesty, a sense that she’s not certain enough about it to look Taylor in the eyes as she says it.

Unless of course it’s a setup to Bitch doing exactly that as she more forcefully repeats herself.

“Fine!  I’ve accepted that.  But you’re my friend, even if I don’t like you half the time.

That’s.

Not how friendship works, Taylor.

I know you’re not all that experienced with it, besides a certain treacherous harpy, but still.

Maybe we should get you some friendship lessons. Man, where’s a hole between realities when you need one… ah, here we go, straight to Ponyville. Go on, Taylor, right on through here, look for a big purple crystal castle, tell the princess Krixwell sent you.

You’re my teammate.  We’re similar.

Is that your idea of what makes Bitch your friend?

The only difference is that you went through your shit years ago, and I just got through dealing with mine a few weeks after I joined this team.  We’ve traveled down the same paths.  Whether you like it or not, we’re kindred spirits.  We both struggle with the social-”  I trailed off.

Yes, being similar can make it easier to befriend someone. It gives you something to relate to each other over. But there are plenty of people who are similar without being friends. Hell, plenty of people who are similar and enemies.

She scowled.  “I-”

“Don’t say you don’t.  Don’t say you could manage on your own.  You’ve seen these guys, and you’re not stupid.”

True.

She looked down at Bentley, putting one hand in front of his snout, as if to check he was still breathing.  “All you’re spewing out of your mouth-hole are words.  You only want to help yourself.”

I mean, yes, of course they’re words. What else do you want her to spew out of her mouth-hole, exactly? 😛

I wished there was something I could have hit, something I could have thrown.  I settled for an enraged groan.

Bitch is an interesting character, but a frustrating person.

“What’s it going to take to convince you!?  Why can’t you understand that I can and have put myself in harm’s way for you?  That despite all the shit between us and everything we’ve gone through, you’re my friend?”

I’m honestly not sure I’d go that far when describing their relationship.

Actually, that’s not true. I’m sure. I’m sure I wouldn’t, because I’ve had plenty of opportunities to and have avoided it.

I shook my head, and took a deep breath.  I forced myself to calm down before I spoke.  “I’m not interested in a pissing contest, Rachel.”

Thank you for stopping this here, although I would actually have been interested in Bitch’s perspective. I suppose we got some of that in her Interlude, though.

“Because you’d lose.”  She poked the knife in my direction, as if to punctuate her statement.

“I totally have a worse life than you. Here, let me stab you to prove it.”

“Because this isn’t a competition, and yeah, I’d lose.  I’m trying to tell you that we’re not that different.”

I do appreciate that Taylor acknowledges that yes, she’d lose that. It helps put a little more weight on the “this isn’t a competition” part.

She scoffed.

God, my legs and feet hurt.  My ribs weren’t exactly sunshine and rainbows either.

Which parts of the ribcage would be the sunshine? I mean, the rainbows would obviously be the bow-like rib bones themselves, but where does the sunshine go? Would the sunshine be filling up the chest cavity? Or maybe it would make up the part of the spine that’s commonly depicted along with the ribs?

Except Taylor doesn’t say “ribcage”, she says “ribs”. Maybe the ribs are made up out of some sort of mixture of sunshine and rainbows? Then again, rainbows are made up partially of sunshine in the first place. Maybe there are some drier parts of normal ribs that would be pure sunshine, while the wetter parts would be rainbows?

Also, what would the medical implications of this be? I don’t think sunshine and its wet byproduct rainbows are particularly good defenses for the internal organs, and may have trouble keeping the chest from collapsing in on itself. You need quite a lot of sunshine to apply a noticeable force on something. I don’t know how much mixing water into it helps with that, though, so maybe rainbows are a little sturdier.

So yeah, that’s probably a good thing, Taylor.

I felt like I had to do something to distract myself.  If it hadn’t been my legs that hurt, I would have wanted to pace back and forth, or run, or something.  I tried to focus on Bitch.  “Fine.  Don’t believe me.  Here’s the nitty-gritty facts, then.  You’re a member of our team.  We need you, and whether you like it or not, you need us.”

Better hope this doesn’t make her question how much she does.

I believe Bitch when she says she doesn’t care about the test(s). Yes, she heavily indicated at the end of 11a that she was intrigued and wanted to see what the tests were all about, but there’s been a significantly different attitude from her since then. She doesn’t seem to actually want to join the Nine.

Which has some implications if the Slaughterhouse Nine lose the game the intended way. They were to take a volunteer, but none of the nominees actually want to join. Not even the other likely option, Hookwolf. So what do the Nine do if noone steps forward?

I’m not sure the game will get to that point, though. I doubt the Nine will win the game, but I suspect their defeat / staving-off won’t be through the game.

Most notably, I suspect that if Jack dies (which can happen if I’m right about Theo), the Nine will break apart. That way, the “Slaughterhouse Nine” will be over, but six or seven powerful psychopaths will still be loose in the city to be dealt with individually in the future, possibly clashing against each other too.

I gave Sirius a glance, making sure to keep my head still so I didn’t give off any sign of hesitation or doubt.

She’s clearly making conscious use of what she learned from that dog psychology book.

“If you were going to hurt me, you would’ve done it while Burnscar was threatening you.”

Problem is, that would’ve entailed showing weakness by taking Burnscar’s bullying and obeying her. Then again, the other option would’ve showed another form of weakness.

Bitch was probably relieved that Skitter and Grue found a third option.

“I don’t like being told what to do, so no, I wouldn’t have.”

Exactly.

I doubt that, I thought.  You don’t like being told what to do by a stranger, maybe, but I’d bet you could be happy if you had a stable environment and consistent leadership.

An alpha, perhaps? In other words, Grue or Coil.

I suppose this would be why Taylor advised Brian to make his leadership position official.

“If you carry out their tests and join them, they’ll be telling you what to do for the rest of your life.”

How is that not consistent leadership, Taylor? It doesn’t check the other box, stable environment, but still.

“I don’t care about the test!” she shouted.  I could see Sirius tense, ready to attack.  “I just want to be left alone!”

Okay, yeah, this I can understand.

“I do care.”

“Fuck you.  You heard what that psycho whore said and now you think I like you.  I don’t.”

“I’m not thinking anything along those lines.”

“You’re probably already trying to figure out a way to use it against me.  Fucking hate people like you.  Manipulative, two faced-”

Hmm. I wonder what Bitch thinks of Tattletale, besides “talks too much”.

Meanwhile, Taylor probably won’t like being described like this, but she might recognize why Bitch would see her that way.

“Hey!” I shouted, cutting her off.  Sirius growled at me.

Bitch brandished my own knife, pointing it at me.  “Do you know how much fucking simpler my life gets if I get rid of you?”

“Uh… Maybe simpler isn’t that great…?”

I’m not sure that “simpler” is just because Taylor creates external problems for her.

“It doesn’t.  You might get the Nine off your case for a few days, but you’d be facing every test after that all on your own.  Believe it or not, I’m on your side.  I want to help you through this mess.”

Taylor, I don’t think she was talking about the Nine at all.

“Don’t bother.  Go, leave.”  The knife didn’t waver.

…is Taylor ever going to get that knife back?

“I’m not going anywhere unless you’re coming with me.”

“Getting cocky because you think I can’t cut you.  Don’t forget that you can be chewed.”

I don’t think it’s so much that she thinks you “can’t” as that she thinks you “won’t”.

It’s a risk, though.