Trickster hurried to my side, binoculars in hand.  I pointed, and I could feel a pressure building around me.  It was slower than his other teleports, more jarring.  It didn’t matter.  Our group was soon indoors.

Slower… is that because he was teleporting more people at once?

Me, Tattletale, Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic.

So who or what did he replace them with?

The interior was rank.  They were smells I’d gotten to know since Leviathan’s attack.  Blood, death, and the dank smell of sweat.

Hard to escape those, these days.

Trickster had replaced all of the kids and the three adults that had been accompanying them.

Ohh, that’s why it was a good thing she found people!

And I guess it was slower because he knew where they were but couldn’t see them?

He hadn’t brought Regent, because Regent was focused on Shatterbird.

The teleport would probably be quite distracting, and they don’t need him inside.

That was part of the plan.  Leaving Bitch behind wasn’t.  I could understand it if it was because of a lack of mass to swap with, but my doubts about the Travelers and about Trickster specifically led me to ask, “You figure Bitch will cover our retreat?”

Hmm.

“And if one of the Nine is here,” Trickster said, his voice low, “We don’t need her dogs making noise.”

…that is a fair point, though it’s a bit different if they intend to get into a fight. But so far, it seems stealth is the goal.

If they’ve driven the Nine out of here and it doesn’t matter that Bonesaw remained, what exactly are they trying to accomplish?

“Decoys,” the word was hollow as it left my lips.

“And the Nine are moving out,” Tattletale reported.  “Leaving the front of the building.  Get ready!”

Better keep really solid track of where everyone is. Especially Burnscar.

I used my bugs to draw a message for the people still hiding in another part of the building.

Crawler was the first to leave the building, charging out the front door, plowing through one or two of the Nine, and barreling towards Hookwolf’s army.

Presumably none of the decoys look like him and Mannequin, at least. Well, at least not him.

The other members of the Nine headed out.  A real Burnscar, Jack, Siberian and Mannequin at the tail end of their mass of fleeing decoys.

Sticking together, huh?

“Bonesaw’s not leaving,” I said.

Oh yeah, hm. Gonna do one last operation for the road?

“Doesn’t matter!  Now!”  Tattletale shouted.

Probably does matter, but do as you wish.

Tattletale looked at me, “Track their movements.  The Nine!  Don’t lose sight of the Nine!”

Ohhh. They’re a diversion. A crowd for the Nine to blend into, to the extent they can, or to distract as the Nine slip away through another exit.

The hostages scattered in every direction, and some invariably headed towards us.  I saw what had concerned Tattletale.  Even though I knew where the Nine were, I was still caught off guard.

…wait, did Bonesaw do something to the hostages, too?

Bonesaw’s talents apparently included crude plastic surgery.  If ‘crude’ was even the right word.

Why wouldn’t they.

So what did she do? Cover their eyes so they’re all running blind? Nah, anyone in the Nine could blind them, that’s too easy.

Every hostage wore the appearance of one of the Nine.

Oh fuck

Ahahaha!

That is genius!

Well fucking played, Nine. Well fucking played.

The group that headed towards us had three Jacks, a Siberian and a Bonesaw.  Their expressions were frozen, their eyes wide with terror.  None of them were perfect, one was too heavy in physique to be Jack, and the Bonesaw had apparently been a short-statured woman who’d had her shins and forearms sawed to a shorter length and reattached.

Yeah, I kind of figured they wouldn’t have the exact physique of the Nine, since that’s part of what Taylor used to recognize them with her bugs.

The resemblance was close enough that someone could mistake them for the wrong person at a glance, and that was all the Nine needed.

Yeah, damn.

This is glorious. Horrible, but glorious.

“Draw some fire towards the Nine’s location, if you can,” I said.

Half the point of the ruse was to keep that from happening, but it ought to put a spring in the Nine’s step.

“I said don’t distract me!”

But he listened.  Shatterbird interposed herself between Hookwolf’s advancing group and the building holding the Nine and their hostages.  Purity fired, and again, Shatterbird’s glass couldn’t absorb the full brunt of the hit.

It being accidental on Purity’s part helps.

She was hammered down into the ground again, and what didn’t hit her struck the building, not far from where the Nine were peering through the window.

“Make a move, you fuckers.”

“Come on, come on,” I whispered.

The Nine reacted.  It just wasn’t what we’d hoped for.

Well, fuck.

So which thing were you hoping for, exactly? That they’d fight back?

Crawler stood and rumbled some words my bugs couldn’t make out, and the hostages fled.  The Nine made no move to try to stop them.  Just the opposite.  They revealed why they’d kept them on hand.

This sounds very bad.

Is this very bad?

I think this is very bad.

The hostages made their way out the doors and into the streets surrounding the building.  Purity was so distracted by Genesis and Shatterbird that she didn’t seem to notice what was happening at first.

Fuck, are they going to make Purity kill the civilians by accident?

Tattletale watched with her binoculars.  “Oh no.”

“Oh no?”  Trickster asked.

Oh no.

“Regent-” I started.

“Don’t distract me,” he said, rushing through the words, “I can barely dodge all this shit they’re throwing at me.”

Yeeah, they’ve got a lot of ranged firepower and it’s currently all focused on him and Genesis. That’s gotta be like a bullet hell.

I followed his line of sight to Shatterbird.  Purity opened fire, and Shatterbird used a cone of glass to block the worst of the kinetic energy and refract the light.  Or something.

Hard to tell how stuff works with super-light, huh?

It didn’t work that well.  Shatterbird was knocked to the ground.  She managed to take flight just in time to avoid Newter, trapped the boy in a cage of glass shards, and then flung a barrage of tiny glass shards at Purity and her group.

Don’t hurt Newter, please, if you don’t have to.

I could see the glints of the shards catching the light as it flew through the air. 

Meanwhile, the actual Shatterbird is just shaking her head internally (since she doesn’t have control of it externally), nitpicking the details of how Regent is using her power. “If you’re going to take control of me, at least do things properly.” Elitist to the end.

I found another cluster of people on the top floor.  Three adult women and two children that ranged from toddler age to five feet or so of height.  Damn it, why did there always have to be kids?

Kids are everywhere!

“I can’t find Grue.”

“He’s in there,” Tattletale said.

“How sure are you?”

“Pretty darn sure.”

Good to know.

“Then how long before we can move on to the next phase?” I asked.  “I found some people, which solves one problem.”

Hm? How so?

“As soon as the Nine act,” Trickster said.  “Tattletale?”

“They’re not wanting to move.  Something about the hostages.”

Are they perhaps already in hiding, from Parian??

Or maybe they need the hostages for something? I suppose there’s a reason they’re still alive.

“Hookwolf doesn’t care about hostages,” I told her.

“I know!  But the Nine are still holding back.”

I suppose it would be possible for them to be holding back because they think the hostages will prevent the attack, but why did they take the hostages in the first place?

There were still way too many people in the room with Crawler.  And I still had no idea where Grue was.  Slowly and carefully, I navigated my bugs through the rooms of the building the Nine had occupied: A makeshift dining hall with a kitchen, a room solely for storing garbage, then a small open shower with three stalls.

Hm. This doesn’t really sound like a library or a hardware store.

It had been some sort of office building with no computers, desks or cubicles. 

Huh.

Something big, firm and formed of cloth… one of Parian’s stuffed animals?

Oh hey. That sounds… potentially bad. Was this her hideout?

It lay prone on the ground, on the other end of the building from where the Nine were poised, so large and fat that it wouldn’t be able to fit through any of the doors.

Hmm.

This would be a balancing act.  Unless the Nine didn’t plan on defending themselves or running, there would be something of a sweet spot.  A point where the enemy forces got close enough that the Nine were forced to act, yet not so close that anyone else was endangered.

This is a strange plan. So much that could go wrong here, sheesh.

Now that I knew where the Nine were, I could focus on the civilians.  I drew out messages for everyone who was hiding in their homes, along with arrows pointing them away from the Nine and Hookwolf’s army.  If someone decided they didn’t want to move, I nipped them with a biting insect or two to prod them.

Nothing like a mosquito bite to say “hey! listen!”.

Dozens of people made their way to safety, following my instructions and running for their lives as they headed out back doors or out of windows to avoid being seen.

Good job, Taylor!

I shook my head.

“Damn.”

I could see Menja leap from Rune’s floating rock and grow as she fell.  She was nearly thirty feet tall when she landed, the road cracking under her weight.

I wonder whether she grows upwards and downwards or just upwards.

Like, while she’s growing, do her feet approach the ground faster than her center does?

Rune leaped off the rock and landed on the husk of a building that hadn’t survived Leviathan’s attack.  A few seconds later, a large section broke off and lifted into the air.

Looks like the theme of the paragraph is the band of capes on the rock, a rock band if you will, breaking up.

She didn’t stay on top of it for long, choosing instead to gather more ammunition, moving on to other ruined walls and sections of building.

And the same goes for buildings, apparently.

On the other side of the building, four people were gathered at one window.  A grown man, two grown women, one of whom was nude, and a child.

Hello, there.

We still need one more, and it appears to be Mannequin.

A man clad in hard armor crouched in one corner, working with tools.

…who the… Colin, is that you?

There were enough cool bodies around them that I would’ve known who they were even if the body types hadn’t fit.

I mean, it could be Mannequin, but I wouldn’t have described him quite that way.

“Found them,” I said, pointing, “They’re watching.”

“They’re not stepping outside?”  Trickster asked.

Not yet, apparently.

So if they’re watching, surely they’ve seen that Jack, Bonesaw, Crawler and Shatterbird appear to be the targets of the enemy fire, despite two of them being in the same room?