“What if-” I started.  “No.”

What were you going to say?

“Keep talking,” Tattletale prodded me.

“What if I scouted the library, while you guys checked out the other site?  I can fly, it’s faster for me to get there.”

…

Alright, fine. I can live with that.

Though in-universe they have no reason to believe they need more people at the other site than at the library.

“And we’d be one mistake away from you being killed,” Grue said.  “If not worse.”

“Trust me, I know what worse is like.”

“Hear me out.  Their only real long-range attacker is Jack, right?  If I’m flying, the others won’t be able to touch me.”

Yes, but you’d be an easy target for Jack unless you flew pretty high up.

“You think.”

“I think.  But if Jack’s at the location, I’d be able to sense him before he got a bead on me.  If that’s the case… I can just attack without exposing myself, and I can alert you guys.”

I suppose she’d be able to use the relay bugs for that last part.

(They said the shelters were close by each other, but I doubt they’re both in normal range for a flying Taylor at the same time. Even if it made sense for shelters to be built that close to each other, that would render all of this moot.)

“Assuming he’s not two steps ahead of us and waiting at some vantage point somewhere nearby,” Grue said.

Good point.

“He functions like a sniper,” Tattletale said.  “Ignore the fact that he slashes and stabs, he’s a long-range combatant with a good sense of what the enemy is doing and how his teammates move on the battlefield.  He stays out of the way and makes surgical strikes, then relocates to another vantage point.  The only thing that keeps him from doing that all the time is how he has to stay involved with his team and keep them under control.

Interesting.

Can’t make it look like you’re in charge if you’re not there.  With less teammates to manage, he’s liable to go on the offensive.”

That makes sense, yeah.

“The two shelters are close to one another,” Tattletale said.  “But I’m still a little worried they’ll leave one location while we’re checking out the other.  I almost want to split up.”

Don’t.

We’ve already had one case this Arc of the Undertravelers splitting up and the group Taylor’s in having to rush to an ongoing fight between the Nine and the other Undertravelers (given the choice, Taylor would go to the library shelter, only to find it empty). We don’t need another right now.

“Is that worth the risk of having half our group caught off guard by the Nine before the other half can arrive?”  I asked.

And that’s the other reason I’ve been telling them not to split up.

“A better question,” Tattletale said, “Is whether we can afford to let them get away.  If we miss this chance to go on the offensive and let them escape, they go into hiding and work out a strategy.”

Fair point.

Though… do they have reason to believe they can’t just stay in the shelter?

“And we’re not exactly in their good books,” I said.  “So we’d be a primary target.”

Was I imagining it, or did Grue’s darkness expand around him by a fraction?

I suppose this is a defensive instinct triggered by the idea of the Nine coming after them, but my first thought was that the darkness muffles sound and would work well as a way to tell the two of them to shut up.

“Good enough.”

We watched as Sundancer cleared away the flames with her flickering sun.  Flames bent toward it as if being influenced by a strong wind, thinned out and disappeared.

Fight fire with fire? No. Here at Undertravelers Incorporated, we fight fire with THE FUCKING SUN.

She cancelled out her power and turned back to us.  “One minute to cool off and we’re probably okay to go!”

Sounds good! And yeah, you don’t wanna touch anything she’s been melting right away.

“We should decide where we’re going and how we’re going to make our approach,” Grue spoke.

Don’t split up.

“If they’re waiting for their teammates, they’ll stay inside the shelter for the time being,” I said. “We’ll be in a better position if we don’t try anything overly complicated, like a pincer attack, if there’s more than one exit.  We can hit them hard enough with Sundancer, Ballistic and my bugs.”

Hm, I do suppose it would make sense for the shelter to have multiple doors, to increase the evacuation speed and allow people to get out the other way if one doorway is blocked from the outside by debris or a broken door.

Grue nodded.  “I don’t disagree.  You two will have an idea if they’re making their way out the other exit.”

Yeah. So could you, right? But you’d have to darken the shelter in order to.

“We’re glad to have you, whatever your reasons,” Tattletale said.

“Thanks,” I told her.

:>

I looked at Grue.  “You okay?”

“I’m getting annoyed that people keep asking that,” he spoke.

But otherwise okay?

“Don’t be a dick,” Tattletale replied.  “She’s asking because she cares.  We’re asking because we care.  And you know that if it was one of us that went through what you did, you’d want to make sure we were in the right headspace to go up against the Nine.” 

Yeah, true. But hey, at least he’s honest about getting annoyed at it.

Grue sighed, but he didn’t respond.

“You’d tell us if you weren’t feeling right, yeah?”  Tattletale asked.

“If I had any idea what I felt, and it wasn’t good, yeah.”

Fair enough. I’m sure you can sort it out with a bit of time and compassion. 🙂

Tattletale turned her head at that.  “I thought you’d be proud.”

Yeah, no, that’s not how Taylor functions. She considered the first Mannequin fight a draw at best because there were a couple people she failed to save.

I shook my head.

“I only heard secondhand, so I didn’t get the full story, but you stabbed Leviathan with Armsmaster’s weapon and distracted him from going after the civilians that were inside that shelter.”

That sounds like something that happened, yes.

“Don’t know how many I really saved.  He had a good thirty seconds to a minute to unload everything he had on the people in there, and we all saw how much damage he did to some of our toughest capes.”

True.

Tattletale nodded.

“I dunno.  I think of what happened back then, and I get this ugly feeling in my gut, like I did something wrong, or I didn’t try as hard as I could have because there was someone in that shelter who I sort of hate.  Hated?  I’m not sure if I should use past tense.”

Right. The mess with Mr. Gladly.

I still think Taylor’s hatred of him is harsher than is really justified, but that’s not unbelievable. Especially when he’s a person she already somewhat disliked in an environment soured by the Harpies.

“One of your bullies?”  She asked.

“Teacher.  I think that when I left the Undersiders, I guess I was thinking of considering becoming a hero or something.  But with what happened at that shelter, I almost feel like it was the turning point.  It was the first time I did anything that someone else could point to and call it heroic, and somehow I can’t find it in myself to be proud about it.

It’s not the only time that’s happened since, either.

And it’s like, that dream of being a hero that I always had just kind of faded away in the face of reality.”

Damn if that sentence isn’t a summary of Taylor’s entire arc so far.

“Three places nearby they could have gone,” Tattletale said.  “Two that fit with the direction they were running.  The shelter underneath the central library, and the one near where Scion confronted Leviathan.”

My money’s on the last one. I’m pretty sure that’s the one Leviathan went to, and Taylor returning there now is too good to pass up.

“I remember that one,” I replied.  We were walking at a brisk pace around the perimeter of the bomb site.

Yeah, I’d imagine she does. You don’t forget where you tore an Endbringer a new asshole easily. And this is Taylor, so I’m guessing she blames herself for at least some of the deaths in there.

The area to our left still burned, and Sundancer was in the lead, clearing away the worst of the fires ahead of us.  I was walking with Tattletale and Grue, Atlas following behind us.  The others rode the dogs behind me.

Nice.

“If we’re going to check those locations, then…” Tattletale trailed off.

“If I had a preference, I’d rather we check the library first.  Bad associations with the other spot.”

Those bad associations are exactly why that’s where they’re going to be.

(If the opposite were to be true, that the library one was going to be the right one because Wildbow didn’t want to involve the bad associations for some reason (hypothetical Wildbow, are you feeling alright?), there wouldn’t be much point in making the bad place one of the options in the first place.)