“I’ll deal somehow.”

Good luck.

“Maybe, maybe,” Cherish taunted us with her tone.  “But shouldn’t you hurry?  The hero is going to die.”

Well, that narrows it down to Armsmaster or Panacea. I stand by my bet.

It was Panacea or Armsmaster.  Both were complicated.  Panacea wouldn’t be able to defend herself, but Armsmaster was a whole mess of complications.

His power is to make the complications real small so he can stuff them all over the place in his armor.

We hurried to get suited up.  My mask in ruins, I wrapped a scarf around my lower face and covered it with bugs.

Works for Miss Militia.

I drew them around my eyes to hide the frames of my glasses.

Nice.

And again we’re seeing Taylor be very casual about bugs right on her face.

As I finished up, I glanced at Bitch.  Her knuckles were white, her posture rigid.

Ready to go fight this fucker, Bitch?

She was pissed.

Let’s just hope it’s at Siberian.

Also, they never did end up asking about Bastard.

I made sure I had all my gear, then joined the rest in filing out.  Grue and Tattletale were the last out the door.

Glancing back to check on Grue, finding his posture and expressions unreadable beneath his darkness and costumes, I caught a glimpse of Tattletale messing with one of the pouches on her belt.

What’cha got there?

The pages we’d torn from the book were folded into a tight square, and she was pocketing them for later study.

Ahh. Gonna try to get her power to tell her who’s who, huh?

She saw me looking.

“You going to be okay with this?”  She asked me.  “You’re the best equipped to find Siberian’s real body and stop her.  Him.  Them.”

And speaking of changing the subject…

But yeah, I suppose she is, what with her bugdar and everything.

That wasn’t what I would have expected.

“Right now?  Siberian’s chasing down one of the candidates.  She’s taken on the next round of testing.

Not surprising. I wonder who her prey is.

Simple test.  Hunt them down and if she catches you, you fail.  She eats you alive as punishment.  Wonder how many she can knock off before you take him down.  If you take him down.”

Well, at least the difference in sex means Cherish uses different pronouns for the two bodies.

I’m inclined to go with “they” for both of them for now because their gender is unclear, but as a matter of clarity from Wildbow’s side, Cherish’s usage is quite helpful. I might resort to it if the “they” becomes too confusing.

“Who’s she after?  We gotta know.”

“No you don’t.  Way I figure it, you go into the fight blind, you still stand a pretty good chance of offing her.  No skin off my back if a few of you die in the process.”

My bet is Armsmaster. I’ve been meaning but forgetting to say, but I think he’s going to be highly relevant in this Arc. He got almost as much attention as Siberian did in the Interlude.

Also you should probably arrange for Cherish to be punished in some way for each member of the Undertravelers that doesn’t make it, and make sure she knows that.

“You need enough of us alive to deal with the rest of the Nine.”

Good point, though just getting Siberian out of the way ought to be a major boost to her survival chances.

“Why would I do that?  I want you to deal with the Nine.  You killed Burnscar, didn’t you?  If you dealt with Siberian, life would be a lot easier for me.”

Oh yeah, that’s true. If she tried to escape, Siberian would be the greatest threat.

“So we’re right?”  Lisa leaned forward.  “There’s a weakness.  She has a real body somewhere?”

“She does.  Right now it’s actually not too far from you.”

…and I quote:

“What, you mean something like Siberian being here?  ‘Don’t you wish you’d asked me to tell you where she was, because she’s standing fifteen feet away from you’?” Alec asked.  “Yeah, that sounds like my sister.”

Pfft.

Fifteen feet away.  I remembered Alec’s joke.

Yup! Looks like he wasn’t far off!

“Near that hole the Endbringer made,” Cherish said.  “Both of them, the real Siberian and the body.”

Wait… which is which?

I suppose “the real Siberian”, to Cherish, is the monochrome duplicate.

“You know what she looks like?”

“He.  A man.  Middle aged or older.  Unkempt.  Doesn’t eat much, probably thin.”

Huh.

So is Siberian trans or something, then? Is the duplicate designable (possibly female to throw off suspicion), or an extension of their idea of themself?

“Bitch, you know that Skitter’s going to betray you again.  Look at her.  She prides herself on being smart, and you know the best way for someone to make themselves feel smart? They make others look stupid, and you’re the stupidest person she has access to.”

Oof.

Also, seems like Cherish is hurrying things up a bit.

I tensed.  I would have been lying if I hadn’t said I hadn’t seen something along these lines coming, but it ultimately depended on Bitch’s reaction.

Yeeah, this could go a lot of ways. Has Rachel taken what Taylor said earlier to heart?

“I fucking hate people who try to manipulate me,” Bitch growled.  “Next time I see you, I’m knocking your teeth in.”

You do that, Rachel. You do that. 🙂

…try not to break your hand on her reinforced teeth.

There was a pause.

“Ah well,” Cherish said.

“And your time is up,” Alec said.  “So, now’s the point where you fuck us over and don’t say a thing.”

Don’t give her ideas.

So what are the threads she has to pull on here? Just reminding him of the bad shit and blaming him for getting himself into that situation, needing to be rescued?

Honestly it seems like the strongest thing she’s got is how he feels about Taylor, and those seem to be fairly out in the open.

I clenched my fists.  Lisa raised a hand, telling me to stop.

“You’re running low on time, Cherie,” Alec said.

Yeah, not gonna get through even half of them at this rate.

“I’m happy for the chance to talk.  Bonesaw’s alive, you know.  She has hands, borrowed from Mannequin.

Ah, I see, she got his help to get back in action.

Honestly, though, I legitimately do think she could sew on new hands while holding the needle in her mouth. I’m thinking stolen from some civilian or other.

She’s plotting what she’s going to do to Grue.  Think about that.  She’s going to take him apart, and it’ll hurt worse the second time around, because she makes that sort of thing a matter of personal pride.

Hoo boy.

Honestly, though? I’m not sure I believe that. Bonesaw never seemed like one for revenge or for deliberately making something hurt more. She’s just interested in her art and her science. But I suppose we haven’t seen her with something to want revenge for before.

She’s thinking about it, daydreaming on the subject, and she’s a smart enough cookie that she’ll figure it out.”

That part I believe, though. I just think it’s got more to do with figuring out where his powers come from and especially how his new power works, than with revenge.

Brian turned his back on the phone, staring out the window.  I wanted to reach out to him, to help ease the weight that idea must have set on his shoulders, somehow.

But of course, the point here isn’t whether it’s true or not. It’s how it makes them feel. Cherish is good at emotional manipulation even without using her power.

“Keeping in mind that I was hanging out with you and the dirty old man and our brothers and sisters.  Nature and nurture, I was kind of fucked on both fronts.  It was a matter of self-preservation to keep you guys entertained, and that was the sort of thing you liked.  Sorry, like, present tense.”

Right. I don’t think that self-preservation accounts for everything, but the nurture really has a lot to say here.

“Maybe, maybe.  And the drugs?  When daddy had you practicing your powers, you ‘hijacked’ a few people at a time, used their bodies to get high with no consequences for you, you threw orgies for yourself…”

“Again.  I was a kid.”

I feel like “kids will be kids” is a weird excuse for anything involving drugs and orgies.

“Teens will be teens” on the other hand…

“How much does that excuse?”

There was a pause.  I looked at Alec, and he rolled his eyes at me.

“Ughh, just like she’s always been.”

Was he like Brian?  His emotions buried deep inside?  Or were they simply not there?

I think it’s closer to the latter, but I do think he has some emotions locked deep inside too, with the lack of emotion being partially Heartbreaker and partially a coping mechanism.

“What about darkness-boy?  Want to talk about what happened yesterday?”

“Not really.”