Heh. Michael Jackson.
Tag: 14.9p2
End of Prey 14.9
AND I THOUGHT THE LAST ONE WAS AMAZING
The best twists are the ones that, in retrospect, make you feel blind for not managing to put the massive clues together, or alternatively, make you feel awesome for figuring it out ahead of time. This was one of the former for me and I loved it, even as it made me feel stupid.
And it was all hinted towards at least as early as the last line of last chapter, which I found really weird. Someone smarter than me could probably tell from that line what was going on (rather than look at the line like a joke that didn’t land mixed with a dramatic ending line that also didn’t land), and end up having a completely different experience of this chapter than I did. I think I would still enjoy this quite a lot if that were the case.
Sometimes it feels great to feel like an idiot.
This was extremely well crafted, with all the alternate options being available for the reader to explain away the various clues as other things, and the way everything comes together when the truth is revealed. Good work, Wildbow. Good fucking work.
The scene with “Brian” brutally manipulating Taylor in order to make her kill Battery was really well done too, though it’s not quite the same with the knowledge that it was actually Jack rather than a heavily mentally compromised Brian. Still, that was fantastically painful.
Cherish was pretty great, apparently trying to worm her way back into the Nine. The Nine could certainly use the numbers right now – they may be down to just the core members, Jack and Bonesaw, unless healing Siberian in ways Bonesaw can’t is part of why they’re tracking down Amy. In retrospect, that’s unlikely, since Bonesaw can do a lot.
The fight at the end had some good moves on both sides – the initial Bonesaw shield was a particularly good one – and really helped to set up the tension for the next chapter.
Next chapter, it’s time to visit Arcadia High, Taylor fighting the Nine as they move bottom to top in search of Amy and presumably Victoria Dallon. How tall is it, I wonder?
Obviously the Nine aren’t going to succeed here. We genuinely do need Amy to survive and I’m sure Wildbow isn’t going to let this mist kill off most of his characters. (I’m working off the assumption that Bonesaw was telling the truth about what the prions would eventually do, because Bonesaw would be compelled to brag about her art.) We also need a way to get rid of the mist, for that matter. Maybe Bonesaw has something on her that can remove it, if you can get it?
I’m thinking Bonesaw will die soon, but Jack may escape and make a break for the city limits. I don’t think it matters as much as everyone in-universe thinks whether he gets out of the city or not (in fact it might be worse if he doesn’t, as the characters get lulled into a false sense of security for the next two years), but he thinks it does and wants to see how. It also becomes a matter of survival when the girl who’s gonna “make sure he [survives]”… doesn’t.
Hm. I suppose if the news say that Jack’s dead, that would remove Theo’s motivation to become a hero quickly. Maybe it’s not as irrelevant as it might seem.
Of course, that’s all assuming my theory is correct. If it isn’t, well, then it matters a lot whether Jack gets out or not. In which case I’m pretty sure he’ll get out.
So yeah! Hella good chapter, A+. See you next time!
I swallowed hard and held out one hand to grab Atlas’s horn as he landed. In a moment, we were in the air, giving chase.
Looks like exposing herself and Atlas to Jack’s power is the way she’s going. Fair enough, I suppose.
At least there are buildings to use as cover.
I wasn’t thinking about winning anymore. I was thinking in terms of minimizing the damage when we lost.
Honestly, at this point, that’s fair. I’m not usually one to condone defeatism, but I get it.
Couldn’t match their speed, not with these noxious clouds slowing me down. With the heroine lying unconscious in the street, several blocks in the wrong direction, I had no allies to turn to.
Hell, you don’t even know that Battery would trust you if you did meet up with her.
Worse, anyone I came across was as likely as not to be a threat. It was down to Atlas and me, and Atlas was especially vulnerable to both of my opponents.
…he is? I mean, Jack’s good against flying, but how is he vulnerable to Bones-oh, the gas, got it.
I couldn’t even fly after them without risking being cut down in midair.
I had minimal information on my opponents, while they knew enough about me to completely counter my powers. Topping it all off, the mechanical spiders were steadily, inexorably closing in on me.
Would be great if her power decided the spiderbots were “close enough”.
I’d lost my last fight with the things, and there were dozens more this time around. Couldn’t fly without exposing myself to Jack’s power, couldn’t stay on the ground without getting swarmed.
…hover?
She tipped half the vial’s contents into an empty container and handed it to Jack. Both protected from my power, they started backing away.
I’m sorry, I can’t help but imagine them moonwalking, and from there the image of Jack Slash in the role of Michael Jackson just springs into my mind. Especially him using those weighted shoes MJ had that let him dip really far forward.
Jack would rock the dark version of that outfit, too. I suppose Bonesaw could join in with a small light version.
I moved to edge around the cloud of black smoke, but Jack struck me with the knife. I had to use my forearms to cover my unprotected face.
Why was her face unprotected, again? I forget.
I just had my glasses, some bugs, and a layer of cloth protecting it. Nothing that would guard against Jack’s cuts.
Yeeah, might wanna keep that out of line of slash.
All the more reason to get rid of the white smoke. If she can use her bugs to sense what she can’t see while protecting her face, she’ll be much better off.
When I’d lowered my arms, they had already turned a corner, running in the general direction of Arcadia high.
Time to take ‘em to school.
Wait, no, that’s where we don’t want them going.
Running around the cloud of black smoke cost me a precious minute. I made my way around the same corner they’d rounded, and stopped short as I came face to face with another black cloud.
I suppose they anticipated her following the same way.
“You won’t live to,” I told him.
Very possible, especially if I’m right.
“I’ll make sure he does,” the girl informed me.
I mean, living as a zombie of sorts doesn’t count.
My swarm could feel others approach from the heroine’s direction.
But have they managed to trust each other?
Incidentally, could Battery somehow have avoided the miasma’s effect and successfully identified the members of the Nine?
They were the size of dogs, and they skipped forward on mechanical legs.
Oh. Those don’t sound friendly.
The mechanical spiders. Dozens of them, coming straight for me.
If I was judging right, they were running faster than I could.
Welp.
I sent the swarm after Jack and the girl, massed into thousands of bugs. Some groups clustered so tight together that they looked like massive, amorphous black entities, amoebas floating through a cityscape painted in shades of red and black.
Cod damn, the aesthetic of this whole section of the Arc is so cool.
Atlas heard my call and headed my way from the place I’d positioned him, too far away to join the fight for a minute or two.
Hey, how did Bonesaw know Taylor had named Atlas? Was that just a guess?
The girl was already mixing something else together. Plumes of white smoke billowed around her, almost luminescent after so long spent in the crimson mist. My bugs died on contact with the gas.
Ahh, here go the anti-bug measures.
Everything I’d learned about my enemies had been blocked. I had no information on them, no sense of what to expect. They weren’t so handicapped.
Having the information blocked like this is a very bad thing in this story. Knowledge is power and right now Taylor can’t access much of it.
My bugs began to gather like a dark cloud, their mass casting a shadow on the already gloomy surroundings.
There’s a storm a-brewing.
“So I end the world? Interesting.”
You’re more like a catalyst, somehow, but yeah.
“The source is a little unreliable,” I lied.
You think that’s gonna deter him, Taylor? I’m pretty sure that’s just gonna make him more intrigued.
“Still, I would love to see how that comes about.”
I’m interested in that too. I think I’ve got a fairly decent pet theory on it that doesn’t actually require you to leave the city (”in every timeline where Jack leaves the city alive the threat is catalyzed” doesn’t mean that every timeline where he doesn’t leave the city alive is safe), but who knows. That theory doesn’t fully explain it anyway, so exactly how that would play out is also interesting.
Actually, I should probably recap in case some of my readers have forgotten this theory: I think Jack already did the thing that catalyzes the threat, all the way back in Interlude 11b. He set Theo on a path to become a cape in two years, and I suspect that this somehow leads to the threat. Perhaps if Jack hadn’t done what he did then, Theo would’ve triggered later, explaining the difference in timescales. Exactly how Theo becoming a cape leads to the future threat is a bit up in the air, but there are certainly ways it could happen. The simplest of them being that his power is ridiculously strong and uncontrollable.
“You’ve outlived your usefulness, Skitter,” Jack spoke.
To be clear, yes, I have figured out that the reason they’d string her along like this would be so they could get in touch with Cherish and figure out where Amy was. So this statement comes as no real surprise, especially after Taylor attacked.
If I’d just had a minute or two more to decide on a course of action.
She thinks this just as a shooting star crosses the sky. Suddenly a random Clockblocker ex machina runs by and freezes Jack and Bonesaw before continuing down the street.
“It was fun. I almost wish I’d nominated you for the Nine. You’re versatile, and there’s so many weak points I could have exploited if I’d had more time.
Hey, told you she has what it takes to be a nominee.
If she didn’t have those pesky morals, she’d be a great addition to the team.
If Cherish’s information on you wasn’t so misleading, I think I could have made you shoot the heroine. To corrupt you like that, it would have been amusing.”
Of course.
And that’s why he took the charge in that scene and “Lisa” stayed quiet – she was deferring to her leader and surrogate father.
I fumbled for the gun, using my bugs to get a sense for where it was. In the same motion that I pointed it, Jack slapped it out of my hand with two slashes of his knife.
Expelliarmus!
He was a dozen feet away, but the knife nonetheless connected with my weapon.
Yep, that’d be his power at work.
The knife cut the girl more than it cut me. I could feel it raking across the exterior of my costume, failing to penetrate, but he was swinging it underhand, and it caught me in the chin, slicing through the side of my cheek and up to my temple.
Ouch.
I tried to keep a hold on the girl for the sake of using her as a human shield, but I saw her reach into her dress and withdraw some vials.
Oh jeez, what does she have now? More stuff to put in the water?
I shoved her toward Jack, then stepped forward to kick her square between the shoulder blades. She collided with him, interrupting his follow-up swing.
You’ve got some nice moves here, Taylor!
For good measure, I drew the bugs from beneath my costume and sent them chasing after her. Some capsaicin-laced bugs, just the few I had remaining.
Awesome. I’m not sure how well that’s gonna work – Bonesaw has a history of not giving a flying feather about the bug stings – but at least it reduces visibility for the Nine and increases Taylor’s sensory abilities.
Jack caught her shoulders and spun her around so she faced me. The vials were already billowing with a chemical reaction.
Uh oh.
Hm. Would she do the same thing she did in Dolltown again, to ward off the bugs?
Or is this gonna be something new? That seems more like Bonesaw.
She threw them at me.
I backed away, and they hit the ground between our two groups, black smoke joining the crimson mist around us.
If it were the same thing she wouldn’t throw them. Probably best to stay clear of the smoke if you can.
If Jack or the girl killed Amy, just about everyone in the city would die violently from the miasma’s effects.
Oh yeah, that also works as a reason for why they’d want to find her.
But I couldn’t stop them without letting on that I knew. Fighting them put me at a clear disadvantage, and-
“Skitter,” Jack spoke.
Did she stand around thinking for too long?
I didn’t waste time turning to face him. I gripped the hair of the blonde girl beside me and virtually hauled her off her feet as I dragged her around to a position between Jack and myself. Jack was already swinging his knife.
Oh boy, here we fuckin’ go.
Human shield Bonesaw, go!
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