I’m beginning to get quite sleepy, so I think I’ll stop here for tonight. See you tomorrow for (probably) the thrilling conclusion!
Tag: 13.9p1
She wasn’t a fighter, I remembered. She had held her own against Leviathan, but she didn’t have experience. I wanted to scream at her, to make her stop talking, to do something to Bonesaw.
Sorry, Taylor, not everyone is as straight-to-the-point as you are.
(Although I suppose Parian isn’t exactly “straight” to anything.)
“If it makes you feel any better, some of them might still be alive. We didn’t kill them all.”
That’s the closest she’s said to anything actually comforting, but that’s only until you remember what they did to the ones they didn’t kill.
Parian snapped her attention to Bonesaw, “What?”
“Some we left alive, so I could give them five-minute plastic surgery. My spiders handled most of it. Implants under the skin, some chemical dyes for hair…”
Of course, Bonesaw doesn’t realize that Parian ain’t gonna take that all that much better.
Also damn, she did that stuff in five minutes?
“Plastic surgery?” Parian shook her head. “What? Why?”
“To make them look like us. They’re all running around out there, drawing enemy fire and freaking out. It’s funny.
“Oh your family might still be alive, thought they look like us now and they might get Purity’d sooner or later.”
And of course, it’ll take a dozen visits with doctors less talented than I to get something even resembling their old faces back. Can you imagine how many people are going to double take when they look at them, before they’ve all been fixed? Like, ‘Oh no, it’s Siberian!’, except it isn’t.”
You’re really not helping your case. 😛
I could see Bonesaw too. Her face was bloodied, her nose gushing blood, and her cheek was a ruined, abraded mess. Whatever had eaten at Parian’s dinosaur had gotten on her too, devouring the edges of her dress, one sock and part of the shoe on the same foot.
Whoops. That’s the problem with splash potions. They splash.
“You killed my mom,” Parian’s voice sounded hollow.
Oh damn, it’s personal now.
“Prepare to die.”
“My teammates did most of the actual killing, so I don’t think I did, if that makes you feel any better.”
…why is her consistent lack of understanding of other people’s values and emotions so damn endearing?
“My aunt, my best friend, my cousin… they were all here.”
“Wrong place, wrong time?” Bonesaw shrugged.
That’s not helping, Bonesaw!
Ahaha
She slapped at a wasp that had managed to get in position to sting her. She wasn’t in the area of her anti-bug smoke anymore.
Well, that might be helpful?
“They told me to run, to protect the kids. But they were supposed to escape while I handled that,” Parian sounded lost, dazed. “I thought they’d get away, so I played dead. I didn’t know.”
She did play dead! I’m not sure if she means while she was in costume or not, but I do lean towards that.
Parian’s creation struck the villainess a second time. Bonesaw was thrown into a metal shelf unit with enough force that she dented it. One test tube slipped from her fingers.
WOO!
The other, she whipped at the stuffed dinosaur. It hit with enough force that it shattered on impact.
Let’s see what this splash potion of… something does.
The dinosaur struck Bonesaw a third time. Heavy as the impact was, Bonesaw was cornered and she couldn’t go flying as she’d done before. My view of the scene was limited to the back of the Dinosaur’s head, and the occasional view of an stubby-fingered arm as it was drawn back for a haymaker punch.
Come on, this is making for back gameplay footage! Get back on the screen!
It pounded her, one hit after another.
My heart sank as I saw the stuffed dinosaur begin to deflate.
Well, fuck.
It backed away from Bonesaw, and I saw a spreading area on its side where the fabric was thinning out, bleaching. Once the first holes appeared in the fabric, the rest of the process was swift. It crumpled almost explosively, revealing a figure inside.
Was I right? 😮
Parian threw off the cloth that had covered her and used her power to rip away her sleeve and part of her dress where it was disintegrating; whatever had eaten at the fabric of her dinosaur armor was continuing the process with her clothing.
I was!
Also, that’s a bit awkward for her.
Suddenly she’s naked in more than one sense of the word, and I think the literal sense is meant to emphasize the metaphorical one.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bonesaw slowly stand. The two combatants were at opposite points in my peripheral vision; Bonesaw stood to the far left, Parian’s creation to the far right.
*fighting game narrator voice* ROUND 1 – FIGHT!!
“That’s really rude,” Bonesaw said, putting inflection on each word. “I was having a nice conversation with Skitter, and you interrupt?”
The nerve!
She snapped her fingers, and mechanical spiders leaped from a spot I couldn’t see to latch onto the stuffed dinosaur, much as they’d done with me.
This sounds like an awesome kaiju movie premise.
PLUSHYSAURUS VS ROBOT SPIDERS
IN THEATRES FROM FEBRUARY 30TH
Needles, saws, scalpels and drills attacked the dinosaur, and it, in turn, smashed the spiders to the best of its ability. Though it clubbed the spiders into pieces with its hands, feet and tail, it still continued to march steadily towards Bonesaw, moving over me and the others.
Niice.
Bonesaw, for her part, was retreating, holding a pair of test tubes in one hand, dropping what looked like color-coded sugar cubes into them with the other.
Let’s hope that’s not something to dissolve plush or whatever threads these are sown together with.
She glanced around quickly, then lunged for a nearby counter, grabbing a bottle of water. She upended it over the test tubes, going for haste over precision. More than half of the water splashed around her feet.
I guess whatever this chemical formula is doesn’t need a specific amount of water.
She started up the saw and pressed it against my skull. The horror of what she was doing was compounded by the most god-awful noise, and a grinding vibration of my skull.
You know what just occurred to me?
She might not be Panacea, but Parian at least ought to be able to stitch Taylor’s forehead up a bit.
If it hurt, I didn’t register it, because the noise of the tool had drawn the stuffed animal’s attention. It charged for us, slamming through the glass sneeze guard of the dining hall’s serving counter.
Huh. So there is some sensory input through them. That, or Parian’s hiding spot is close.
It’s a possibility that she’s inside the thing. It makes for a decent hiding place, using it as an armor. The deflating and inflating doesn’t have to be by range, that might just be a thing she can choose to do in order to play dead.
It struck Bonesaw, hard, and the saw slid across my head, cutting through my hairline. I didn’t care.
Honestly that’s just a minor inconvenience at this point.
My rescuer was some kind of cartoonish dinosaur made of black and blue fabric. I could see the logo of this health club repeated several times over the stuffed animal’s exterior.
I guess you take what’s available.
Though it’s still possible that she made it. She might’ve worked for the health club before Leviathan struck.
The stuffed animal had stopped in the middle of the cafeteria. Either it didn’t hear Bonesaw or something else had its attention.
I think for this to be effective, Taylor will need to use spider string to direct Parian. Problem is she can’t do that consciously, and first she needs to realize how Parian is sensing things.
I could feel that not unfamiliar sensation of darkness creeping in around the edges of my vision. Was I passing out? How much blood was I losing?
I take it it’s not Grue finally using his power.
I blinked three times. Stall.
Who knows how she’ll take that. “I have more to say”?
“No, no.” She stroked my hair, and my forehead lit up with a burning pain where she’d cut. “We should get this done before you drop dead. Don’t think I can’t see the changes in your breathing and pupil dilation.”
Right, sure.
The stuffed animal pushed the door open and walked into the cafeteria.
Heya!
The room darkened as it passed in front of a window.
Well, Bonesaw ought to notice it soon enough.
Please don’t notice it.
“I’ve got a regular mod for your amygdala, to make sure you behave, and a frame I implant to your skeleton and heart to help control you, make you stronger, more durable.
Huh, she genuinely isn’t noticing it.
Fair enough. She is focused on her craft right now.
I figure we’ll try to go for a cosmetic shift. I have to say I admire this armor, so why not let take that to the logical conclusion? We’ll give you an exoskeleton. It’d be awesome.
Sure, makes sense!
Compound eyes, claws. We’ll see how far we can go. Won’t that be fun?”
Let’s see how far we’ve come! Let’s see how far we’ve come! 🎶
“What do you want to know. About your friend there? It’s more research than anything else. Or maybe about you?”
I blinked. The stuffed animal was close.
Which friend? Grue?
“Art and you, huh. You want to know what I’m gonna do when we’re done with my investigation?”
Sure, why not.
Why not? Knowing had to be better than wondering. One blink.
Pfft. Sometimes, once in a blue moon, I’m in tune with Taylor.
“I’m going to go all out. Way I figure it, I set your Gemma lobe to attract bugs around you, then remove it, so you’ve got no conscious control over it. But there’s a point to it!
So she’d be a constant bug magnet?
I make some physical modifications to you, see. Implant some of Mannequin’s equipment so you’ve got enough sustenance to keep you going, and sustenance to keep the bugs you bring to you alive. You become a living hive, see? We could even make it so they crawl inside you and build nests there.”
Not gonna lie, that’s… not a bad idea, from the perspective of someone who thinks like Bonesaw. She’s got a sense of thematics in her art.
“That’s confusing. You’re not just trying to delay the part where I carve up your brain, are you?”
Well, duh.
But it’s your fault it’s confusing. One blink would barely have been any more of a solid answer.
I blinked twice.
Hehe.
“Not getting what you’re trying to say. One blink for yes, two for no, okay? Now, do you actually have something meaningful to communicate?”
Yeah, that’s much better. 😛
Three blinks? Although one blink would probably be better when it comes to delaying her.
I blinked once, hard.
“Are you going to tell me to stop?”
Nah, that’s pointless.
I blinked twice. She wouldn’t listen if I did, and then it would be right back to the surgery. I trembled, but I didn’t take my eyes off her.
“Tell me when to stop. Last requests, threats, your friends, um… science, art-”
Time for a staring contest with the roof!
I blinked once.
Art? Heh, nice, sure, get her talking about art. To her, that would mean what she does, the surgeries and everything.
“Art? Yours? Mine?”
Another blink. If anything would get her talking, it was her ‘art’.
Yes!
Let’s just hope she doesn’t decide to illustrate her talking points.
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