I scrambled to my feet, not taking my eyes off her, and rapidly backed up.  A piece of the armor on my back dangled from where she’d cleaved through it, swinging against my backside in time with my steps.

Hrm. Better fix that before going up against Purity. Not that armor is likely to help much against her vaporizing rays.

I held the smoke grenade low, to minimize how much it obscured my vision.  When I’d backed up enough that there was an alley to my right, I threw the smoke grenade away.

Nice. Though surely Night has more.

Night stopped following me, then swept her cloak up to shield against the bugs that still swarmed her.  I couldn’t go as all-out as I normally might with my swarm, without risking that I’d obscure my own vision of her and give her another opportunity to transform.

Ah, yeah, that’d be a problem.

Second try, then.  Baton in hand, I charged her.

She was thrashing beneath her cloak, six or so paces away.  The bugs were nipping and stinging flesh.  Good.  One or two more good hits with the baton, she’d be disabled.

Disabled in her human form. Who knows, maybe she’ll still be able to get up in monster form.

Night bent low, and I thought maybe she was down for the count.

Then she swept her cloak off and threw it up into the air.  It opened wide and momentarily filled my field of vision.

This woman has a fair few tricks up her sleeve.

I heard her footsteps, two normal ones, heels clicking rapidly as she ran, then the noise of claws scraping against hard ground.

That’s rarely a good sound to hear, unless they’re dog claws.

She pulled the pin free, and black smoke began billowing from the upper end of the canister.

Hm, I guess she’s got some variety in her blinding arsenal.

It was suicidal, perhaps one of the dumbest things I’d done yet: I charged her.

Oh jeez. What are you thinking, Taylor?

She was already standing, holding the canister out in front of her to ensure the plumes of colored smoke obscured her quickly.  I struck at her hand with my baton, knocking the smoke grenade to the ground.  I stooped for it, but she stepped forward, blocking it with her body, seizing my shoulders.

Would getting a hold of it even help much?

She wrestled me to one side of the alley, perhaps to try and push me away and buy time for the smoke to build up, maybe for another angle.  I wouldn’t find out, because I brought my baton against the side of her face.

Nice!

I got a sense from the feeling of the hit that she didn’t wear any armor or protective wear beneath the cowl and mask.

Ooh, bad move, Night. Maybe it’s your turn to be concussed.

Snapping my head around to check, I saw our escape route barred by Fog’s mist.

Naturally.

I could see Angelica’s silhouette in the midst of the cloud.  Bitch and Tattletale were struggling to drag Grue back away from the advancing mist.

When I was counting the eyes the Undersiders had available, I didn’t account for the fact that three of the eyes’ users were unavailable at the moment.

Grue, too weak to stand, was trying to use his darkness to wall Fog off.

Oh hey, you’re up!

I am actually quite curious how the darkness and Fog interact.

Grue might have stopped Fog entirely, except he was so weak that his darkness was dissipating almost as fast as he produced it.  Fog slipped through the largest gaps and continued a slow but inexorable advance.

It seems like they either collide or interact in a way that Fog is aware of and that is undesireable to him. Otherwise, he could just flow right through.

Night was still struggling to get away from the bugs as they navigated around the folds of her cloak and the coverage of her mask.

Not gonna be as easy as just running.

Drawing my baton, I started to advance on her.  Night was human like this, vulnerable.

As long as you don’t. blink.

She drew her hand from her sleeve.  Another canister with a pin in it.

“Regent!” I shouted.

This one comes prepared, but Taylor knew of the possibility now and can react faster. As can Regent, hopefully.

He snapped his hand out, and Night’s arm bent in a palsied, twisted angle.  The grenade fell to the ground, and Night fell on top of it.

Nice!

I thought that Regent had been the cause of her fall, until I saw her raise her head, her good hand holding the grenade, pin held in her teeth through the fabric of her mask.

Oh.

She struck at Judas a half-dozen times in the span of a second, her limbs flashing out and striking hard enough that I could feel the vibrations in the air.

Still doesn’t beat Ranma Saotome, but not bad.

Except of course it is bad because you’re hurting the doggo

Judas staggered away from her, colliding with me and one of my teammates.  I felt Judas’ crushing weight against my own body,

uh oh

the raw meat feel of his flesh and the stone hardness of his bones smothering me, before he shifted his weight and lurched back her way.

That was close to becoming a Taylor pancake.

From the way Judas’ movements followed Night’s as she moved back, and the rigidity of his face and neck, I knew he’d managed to get a grip on her with his teeth.

Nice work! Good dog.

He weathered the hits as she continued to thrash him.  He seemed to be getting the worse end of the exchange, but he’d taken away some of her leverage.

Slowing her down a tad, hopefully.

Blinking, I tried to focus on Night, but I saw double.  For several long, terrifying seconds, I was unable to bring what I was seeing into focus.

I guess there’s a sort of middle ground between seeing and not seeing.

Judas was thrown against a wall, and went limp.  The furrows Night had carved into his face left more gouges than untouched flesh, his face a mess of shattered bone and hamburger meat.

|:(

With Judas’ bulk out of the way, I could make out Night, backing away.  My bugs settled on her, and she pulled her cloak up to shield her face, still walking backward.

I wonder if she even has a face in her monster form. Or if she does, how many?

Night was already moving.  My bugs were my only sense that still worked, but they couldn’t get a grip on the surface of her body.  She moved too fast, and her skin was smooth and oily, slick with some sort of lubricant.

What shape is she?

The result was that I couldn’t really make her out in the darkness.  I only got flashes, the vaguest sense of how she was put together.  I was reminded of the ink blots I’d seen during my brief stay in the mental ward.

A Rorschach ink blot test? That’s just about the most vivid way Wildbow could describe this while not at all stating what shape she has assumed.

Every fraction of a second, it was a different set of ink blots, a different shape, all edges and angles and sharp points, entirely up to interpretation.

I see… so I guess she’s the kind of writhing, unknowable monster, then.

So here are a couple questions I have:
– Tattle made it unclear which parts of her description were bullshit, including the idea of the Weeping Angel dynamic being a psychological block. I wonder, does someone watching her still stop her from being like this if she doesn’t know they’re watching?
– Do cameras count? If they do, do they only count when someone is watching through them live? If they don’t count when not being watched live, or don’t count at all, can someone film her turning into this form and watch it later?
– Why doesn’t being inside Fog’s fog form seem to count as him seeing her? Can Fog not see inside himself? Can he even see at all in his fog form?

Whether I shut my eyes or suffered the effects of the flashbang grenade, the effect would be the same.

Might as well shut your eyes, then. Save them a little of the hurt.

The moment we took our eyes off Night, she’d become what Tattletale had termed ‘all monster’.

Which doesn’t exactly bode well.

I opted to have more control over my temporary blindness, clamping my hands over my ears, dropping into a crouch to shove my face against my knees, eyes wrenched shut.

Yeah, good call. Not only should it hurt less, but it ought to allow you to open your eyes again more quickly, limiting Night’s monster time.

I sent every bug in my immediate vicinity toward Night, in the hope of slowing her down even a fraction.

The flashbang went off while it was still over us.  The last time I’d been around one when it went off, I’d had a wall between me and the detonation.  I wasn’t so lucky this time.  It wasn’t just bright and loud.

Ouch. I guess something needs to cause that brightness and loudness? I don’t really know how a flashbang works, though.

The blast rattled through me, left me dizzied, unable to balance, almost incoherent.  It was scarily like the concussion I’d endured.

You need to stop taking hits to the head.