Easier to lie when I was shouting, my face hidden.

Oh.

They picked up Ballistic and bolted.

I was left behind in moments.

Now what, Taylor?

Between the four of us, I doubted Sirius had it in him.  Not if we wanted to move fast.

“Grue!”  I called out.

“Don’t you fucking dare!”  He turned his head around.

What. You’re not thinking of trading places, are you?

To be fair, unlike Ballistic, Skitter is a runner who didn’t just get dropped 15 feet.

I disentangled from Bitch’s grip, avoided Grue’s clutching hand and slid to the ground.  I didn’t land with both feet under me, so I tipped over and rolled.

Taylor, you’re not on fire yet, you don’t need to stop, drop and roll!

“Ballistic, take my seat!”  I shouted, as I got my feet under me.  I glanced behind me at Crawler and broke into a run.

Yeah, I can understand why Grue doesn’t like this (his something is potentially sacrificing her life for Ballistic), but it does mean a better overall chance of team survival than Ballistic running.

“Skitter!”  Grue barked the word.

“Just go!  I have a plan!”

You do?

Have you sensed something Amy produced that can help you out?

For now, at the very least, I had the advantage.

“Genesis, can you run?”

“Fuck.  No,” Genesis spoke.  “Made these claws for grabbing.”

These claws are made for grabbing, and that’s just what they’ll do…

True enough, her forelimbs and rear limbs were more like clawed hands than feet or hooves.

So to recap, she’s a winged gargoyle with clawed monkey hands.

“Imp, Ballistic, run!”

It wasn’t enough.  We had too much distance to cover before we could be sure of our safety.  Or of Imp and Ballistic’s safety, anyways.

Well, fuck. These two may come out of this with some nasty changes courtesy of Bakuda if they’re unlucky.

Even with another two minutes, or another five- well, people weren’t that fast as a rule, and neither Imp nor Ballistic were runners.  It looked like Imp had hurt herself in the fall.

That certainly doesn’t help.

“Tattletale!”  I shouted.  “Take Imp!  Bentley’s strong enough to take four!”

Desperate times call for desperate overloading of doggos.

“Got it!”  She cried, steering Bentley around and their group scooped up Imp, pulling her up onto Tattletale’s lap.  Four people, but three of them were girls in good shape.

Sirius wasn’t as strong, and Grue was heavy, Bitch wasn’t exactly slight, and Ballistic was built like a football player.

Trickster ain’t gonna be happy.

Ballistic even less so.

No.

Crawler’s pause to grab concrete had bought me time to get my bugs into position.  They swept over Crawler, laying down braided ropes of silk joined by adhesive lines and thin gossamer.

Still not sure these are going to be strong enough.

Even caterpillars began offering their assistance, using the silk they produced for cocoons.

Using every resource available, I see.

He was a big guy, but it was a lot of silk.

Hm. I suppose so.

I could see how it hampered his movements.  There was even something approximating surprise on his face as he dropped down so all six legs were firmly on the ground, and his forelimbs didn’t extend as far as he’d expected.

Alright, I can accept this. They’re not strong enough to stand in his way, but they can weigh him down.

He tried to run and found himself hampered further.

And make his legs sticky.

Crawler sported two or three tons of physical prowess, and his power had fine tuned him into a physical specimen like few others.  My bugs had millions of years of evolution to refine the quality of their silk and their ability to produce it.

True enough. It’s good stuff.

“Damn it!”  Grue swore.  “Go!  Go!’

One minute, give or take.

We ran.  There was the sound of more rubble shifting out of place, and then a guttural laughter.  It sounded more like it came from multiple gargantuan people laughing in sync than it did from the one monster.

How many mouths does he have?

“More!”  His voice was even more unnatural, a jumble of individual sounds that only barely came together into something like a word.

Wait, what? Did he actually get hurt somehow? Or is he just thrilled by the fight?

Not so different from when I spoke through my swarm.  “Fight me!”

The impacts of heavy footfalls were audible as Crawler broke into a run, giving chase.  They were even tactile.

Is it perhaps that he’s seen the results of Sundancer’s power and wants to touch?

He was more than a hundred feet behind us, but I could feel his impacts shake Sirius.

Damn.

As my bugs struggled to catch up, my swarm sense felt Crawler stop, rearing up on his two hindmost legs.

Hm? What’s wrong, kitty? Timmy fall in a well again?

He caught at one corner of a building and tore, twisting his body to throw a chunk of brick.

Oh. That’s not good.

“Look out!”  I shouted.

My words were too slow.  The rock collided with Genesis, catching one wing.

Shit!

(One rock, three Undertravelers, yada yada…)

She collapsed to the ground, and both Ballistic and Imp fell the fifteen or so feet to the ground.  Imp shrieked as she landed.

Hey, Imp, at least you have the super useful power in this situation that you can avoid people noticing your embarassingly painful landing!

Or maybe Ballistic could stick his hand down and launch the Earth out of orbit!

“Three people, two fliers?” Tattletale asked.

Maybe you have enough time to let the fliers come back for Imp and Ballistic? Although Genesis might not be able to carry them in her current form, so maybe Shatterbird would have to make two trips.

“Can carry one,” Regent said.  “Too tired to carry more.”  Shatterbird landed and wrapped her arms around him.

Looks like he’s handling himself.

“I can try to carry the others,” Genesis’s voice sounded very normal considering her gargoyle-like face.  Bitch handed her a length of chain.

Alright, I guess she’s stronger than the pterodactyl comparison suggests.

“One minute and fifteen seconds.  Not sure if it’s paranoia or my power, but I think the bomb’s going to hit closer to the deadline than not.”

It’s also better for writing a nick-of-time escape.

Genesis gathered the chain into a loop.  As Imp and Ballistic found their seats and Genesis made motions to take off, there was the sound of shifting rubble.

Crawler, no. Bad kitty.

“Until?”  Regent asked.

Until everything goes to hell.

“They’re bombing the area,” I explained.

Tattletale, Sundancer and Trickster found seats on Bentley’s back.  Bitch climbed up behind me.  Imp materialized, for lack of a better word, dropping the effect of her power.

Hah. Hey there, Imp.

That left her and Ballistic.

Okay, so what you do is you let Ballistic launch Imp into the sky and–

*gets clocked in the face by Grue*

Grue and Sundancer made their moves, Grue swamping Crawler in darkness while Sundancer brought her orb around into the face of the building.

Ahh. Blinding him so he doesn’t jump to block the orb?

With her miniature sun, she sheared through the concrete and metal, zig-zagging the orb through one floor.

The supports obliterated or melted, the building crashed down to the street with enough force that the rolling cloud of dust and was enough to drive us back.

And then burying him to stop him from immediately following you. Sure, that might work!

He had to weigh several tons, but the building had him beat in that regard.

We hurried to gather.  Genesis landed.

Now you need to get out of here ASAP!

How’s the steed coming along, Amy, if that is indeed what you’re doing?

“One minute, forty-five seconds,” Tattletale said, “More if we’re lucky.”

Time is ticking down quickly!

We were so small.  Even in the scope of a single neighborhood, my power extending for roughly a thousand feet in every direction, it made us all seem tiny.  Even Crawler.

There’s a certain irony to that given the size of the creatures that are giving her that feeling.

But with their sheer number, they suddenly become big.

“Don’t use your orb on him,” Tattletale cautioned.  “Won’t do us any favors, and it’ll only make him stronger for the future.”

And that’s if it actually hurts him.

“Then what should I do?”

“There’s no civilians here.  Legend and the others have evacuated.”  I told her.  “The buildings are empty.

Except for the other Nine?

She nodded, apparently grasping my meaning.

“You go high, ‘Dancer, I go low?” Grue asked.

She nodded.

What does Grue– he’s gonna borrow her power?

I held back as they advanced, ready to make their move.  Ballistic caught Crawler with a projectile, and the monster went sliding.  Shatterbird hit him with a wave of glass to keep him down, and Genesis swooped down to smash him over the head with the wreckage of a small car.

It did surprisingly little to keep him down.

Well that’s helpful.

Flying bugs were gathering in formations, carrying the slower bugs forward and maneuvering the spiders to spin webs.  Smaller bugs, the useless ones, I directed to Amy and formed into dozens of decoys.  Millions of instructions a second.

But I’m not sure Skitter’s multitasking limits take the form of her not being able to multitask past a certain point. The way this is being described, it sounds like she’s losing focus, becoming one with the swarm. She is the swarm.

Estimates said that insects outnumbered people by two hundred million to one in worldwide population.  Part of that distribution was biased toward rainforests and other areas humans left uninhabited.

Welcome to beautiful Brockton Rainforest!

That’s a fuckton of bugs. And “insects” doesn’t even cover the whole phylum of creatures Taylor can control.

At the end of the day, that was just insects, and there were more creatures under my sway than the six-legged variety.

…like I was saying.

Taylor controls arthropods. It took me a while to connect the fact that she can control crabs and arachnids to that higher classification, but I got there eventually.

I could feel them in the earth, in the walls, beneath the pavement, even.  Even from the weeks after I’d left the hospital, I’d dismissed them as background noise, just sources to draw from in amassing my swarms.

Honestly, as far as creature control powers go, arthropod control is really good for always having some ammunition handy.

Now, it felt different.  My range was extended, and it wasn’t because I was distracted, cornered, trapped.  As Crawler noticed us and shifted his position to keep us all in line of sight with his innumerable eyes, I had a few moments to think, to experience my power at its best.

She’s going mad with power! Mad I say! 😮