No immediate reply from the other two.  My phone displayed the time as 1:38.  Close enough to lunch for me to mark it as a continuation of the trend.

Heh. Lunchtime really isn’t treating Taylor well.

So hang on, didn’t 1.1 start out with a comment on lunchtime?

Yes, it did: “Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was, an hour is too long for lunch.“

I was going to develop an anxiety disorder over this.  I texted him directions, informing him to look for the building with the crane.

I would’ve guessed the Undersiders knew where the doghouse was – especially considering Brian didn’t ask – but it’s entirely possible they don’t. Rachel doesn’t seem like the type to tell them if she didn’t see a reason to, and Taylor is quite possibly the first to have successfully negotiated her way into visiting.

That said, I’m fairly sure Brian would want to know where she goes in case trouble came up. Y’know, like it just did.

Enough bugs had gathered to cover me, with plenty to spare.  I’d wanted to be absolutely sure I was covered, so I piled them on top of one another, several layers deep.  It was stifling.

Yeah, I can’t imagine this is particularly comfortable.

I was forced to breathe through my nose, and my vision was obscured by the bugs that had collected on my glasses.

The fact that she’s covering her glasses like this kind of forces her to use other senses, including her power, to navigate. Is she going to look through the eyes of a bug on the glasses?

More than that, it was hot in the midst of the dense swarm.  Still, I was happier enduring it than risking being identified.

Yeah, it’s a necessary evil.

I’d need a shower after this.  Ten showers.  And I’d pay to use a gym or pool or something, so I didn’t have to endure the craptacular shower at the loft while I scrubbed my skin raw.

Hehehe.

Ninety percent of my rationale for designing a costume that covered my entire body was for this exact reason, damn it.

That’s good thinking. Shoulda brought it with you, though!

Why hadn’t I brought my costume?  Why?

To be fair, you had no expectation that you might need it. Happens to a lot of heroes from time to time – though really, you should start bringing it everywhere when you’re hanging out with the Undersiders.

I flinched at the deafening roar of a gunshot.  Waited with my breath held, until I heard the murmur of conversation at the door again, Bitch’s voice.  A warning shot?

Maybe Tom’s aim is as bad as his father’s, perhaps for the same reason. Not sure if that’s a good thing if it’s true.

I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and sent a text out, selecting Brian, Lisa and Alec as the recipients:

Half a dozen skinheads here.  At least one gun.  Need backup.

Yes, good move. Get everyone in on this if you can.

My phone vibrated with a reply a few seconds later. Brian:

Omw.  was headin home.  will take minute.

I guess this implies that Brian’s home is in a similar direction as the doghouse? Since it seems like it took more than “a minute” – even in the imprecise metaphorical sense – to get here from the base. Or it could mean the exact opposite and Brian means it’ll take a minute to get back to the Undersiders’ base before he can start heading to the doghouse.

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the dialogue.  There was no way this wasn’t going to come to violence, now.  I pulled off my shoes, then ran in my sock feet across the concrete floor, keeping as low as I could.

Welp. Yeah, honestly, this has gone too far to sit back and do nothing but watch. I’m still not 100% sure Bitch won’t find a way around this, but it’s not looking good.

I found the knife that Bitch had used to open the bags of dog food, then stuck it in my back pocket.  Still nothing I could see that would work as a mask.  I wasn’t even wearing a sweatshirt or enough extra layers to use a piece of my clothing for a mask.  It had been too warm a day.

Which left me one very unpleasant option.

Hm…

Barring the idea of using the one layer of clothing she has and exposing herself more than she’s comfortable with, and more than I’d expect from this story that so far doesn’t play out like an ecchi anime… I guess she could cover her head with a swarm of insects? That would make a lot more sense anyway.

I exerted my power, and was glad to find that the grassy field and the half built building had a fair supply of bugs to work with.  Grasshoppers migrated my way, and I emptied a wasp nest that nestled in the wall above the unfinished second floor.  Blackflies that had been enjoying the copious amounts of dog waste flew my way, and innumerable ants and spiders formed the remainder of the swarm.

Hiya!

All together, they streamed my way to gather on my skin, crawling up my legs and torso, some turning downward to cover my arms.  As one, they covered every inch of my body, even creating a mass over my mouth and glasses to obscure everything.  It didn’t tickle as much as I thought it might, but I did shudder.

She’s not even stopping at “mask” – she’s making an entire makeshift bug swarm costume!

The man with the bottles sneered, “Nah.  See, we heard that howling earlier.  So did some of our neighbors.  Kaiser did tell us to play nice, but way I figure it, if we tell Kaiser you started this shit, and he asks around to check our story, he’s gonna hear there was howling before there was fighting.”

…fair enough.

“You know who I am,” Bitch threatened them, “You know my abilities.  You’re really going to fuck with me, here?  With my dogs around? Really?”

To be fair, we don’t know if any of these people are parahumans. But yeah, Rachel isn’t one you fuck with lightly.

in any sense of the wNO. BAD KRIXWELL.

I heard, rather than saw, the sound of a gun cocking.  The teenage boy, who I identified as Tom, raised a gun in Bitch’s direction.

“Still think you’re tough?” the man mocked Bitch, “Guns are the great equalizer, y’know?

Well, fuck.

One particularly strong parahuman may be equivalent to 50 people with guns, but one gun can still easily take down most parahumans with a single shot. Rachel is very much one of those parahumans.

My son here wants a place in the Empire, and to do that, he’s gotta earn his stripes.  Killing you would be a good way to go about it, I’m thinking.”

This feels eerily familiar. I can’t help but think back to a certain situation we’ve seen recently, in the Birdcage.

Oh, and the Park Jihoo incident, for that matter. Bottle guy probably isn’t going to liquify Tom if he doesn’t shoot, but still.

Fuck. I looked around the inside of the building for something I could use as a mask, but there wasn’t anything.  Why hadn’t I brought my costume?

Rachel has dealt with this before, and still doesn’t seem to be powering up her dogs. She, the aggressive team member with most of the offensive power and trouble with social situations, is opting for talking to the enemy.

And honestly, I think she might be right to, for now. If this escalates into a fight, it’s bad for relations between the Undersiders and E88. The attack on Hookwolf’s establishment was trouble enough.

The situation was a hair away from devolving into a bloodbath, and my civilian identity was plain to see.  I couldn’t even work from inside the building, without risking that someone might have heard about my power or how I operated, and come in after me.

In other words, Taylor is forced to sit and watch Rachel deal with this her way.

I could only see Bitch from behind, but I saw her turn her head to evaluate the group.  Maybe sizing up how long it would take her dogs to murder them all.

Maybe… but I honestly think Taylor is overestimating how much of a cold-blooded killer Rachel actually is.

“If you were going to do that,” she said, “You would have done it before now, and I’d kill you for it.  Either you’re too scared to really do something about it, which you should be, or Kaiser told you hands off.”

She may not be the best at social situations, but she can call a bluff when she sees it.

In fact, she may be better at it than most, given her inclination to distrust the intentions behind sincere remarks.

It was the last attitude I would’ve expected from her.  Bitch, being level-headed?

Yeah, as I was saying, I think Taylor has built up an image in her head of Rachel as this crazy, bloodthirsty girl, and now she’s seeing that it’s not quite accurate.

He reached for another bottle, then stopped.  A slow smile crossed his face as he looked to a teenage boy that was standing just beside the bald girl,  “Thing about something as goddamn irritating as that barking, is it gets us talking about how we could deal with it.  Tom, here, had my favorite suggestion.  He said we could soak hot dogs in antifreeze and throw ’em into the field back there.  Whaddya say?” 

So yeah, I’m gonna give you what should essentially be the standard greeting for E88 members:

Go fuck yourself with a shovel.

A guy, thirty or so, was holding a carton of empty beer bottles.  He held one by the neck, tossed it into the air and caught it again, then whipped it in Bitch’s direction.  I flinched more than she did as it shattered explosively against the front of the door.

Rude.

“We told you to get of here,” he sneered at her.

“I was here first.”

“Doesn’t matter.  We’re claiming this neighborhood, and that barking is driving me up the fucking wall.”

…the E88 is expanding into the Docks, like they were planning to in Interlude 2. With them being in practically a war with Coil right now, it’s fair to say that this is the first we’ve really seen directly of the War of the Docks.

Though that might be putting it a bit more strongly than it deserves. So far this doesn’t amount to much more than a neighbor feud.

“You’ve said so before.  Try earplugs.”

He grabbed another bottle and threw it, hard.  Bitch had to lean out of the way this time, to keep it from hitting her shoulder.

He doesn’t seem to have the best of aims. Say, what happened to the beer that used to be in those bottles?

“Can’t do business wearing earplugs, you dumb whore,” the man put his hand on the head of the partially bald girl, who made a face at Bitch.

“Then don’t do business.  I don’t care.”

Hehe.

In any case, these numbers had been a way to keep one’s racist feelings on the down low, around those that weren’t already affiliated, until Kaiser’s predecessor formed Empire Eighty-Eight here in Brockton Bay.

1) It really seems like these codes are common knowledge now. I guess that’s a natural result of a far from low-key group of supremacists parading them around and identifying themselves with one of them.

2) Apparently Kaiser didn’t found the E88… interesting.

The move had pushed an ultimatum on the more secretive racists in the area, forcing them to either join the aggressive, active group in the public eye or retreat further into hiding.

Both of which are bad for actually dealing with the racism.

It had also drawn crowds of the more diehard white supremacists from the surrounding regions to Brockton Bay.  When people with powers, Kaiser included, started to congregate in the group, Brockton Bay became something of a magnet for those sorts.

Welp. No wonder the E88 is so big, then.

One of the bigger collections of racists above the bible belt.  Quite possibly the biggest congregation of racist supervillains.

Not exactly the feat you’d want your city to be known for.

The day Empire Eighty-Eight had gotten its name hadn’t been a good day for our city.

Evidently not.

If your name is Colin, I genuinely apologize for involving you with the white supremacists in that last post.

Bitch had her dogs standing around her, and she stood opposite a group of seven or so people.  They ranged from thirtyish to twelve in age.  It wasn’t hard to figure out who they identified with.  Half of the guys were blond or dyed blond, and the others had shaved heads.

Well, shit. Hi, there, E88.

So are they sent by Hookwolf?

The youngest was a twelve-ish girl who’d taken a razor to her scalp, too, leaving only her bangs and the hair hanging around her ears and the back of her neck.

Ughh.

The detail that confirmed my suspicions of their affiliation was the number eighty-three that I saw etched on one of the guys’ t-shirts in permanent marker.

Eighty… three?

Did part of it rub off or something? Or is this just their way of not-so-effectively establishing deniability while still getting close enough to wearing one of the gang’s symbols that other E88ers will recognize it? “Of course I’m not a Nazi, does this look like it says 88 to you?”

The white supremacists loved codes in numbers.  If you were suspicious about whether a number was one of their codes, the number eight was a good clue, since it cropped up a lot.  The eight referred to the 8th letter of the alphabet, H; Eighty-eight stood for H.H. or ‘Heil Hitler’, while eighteen pointed to Adolf Hitler in the same way.

Some of this I knew from when I first learned about 14/88 via this block, though 18 is new to me.

By this system, 83 would be “HC”… Um… I got nothing. “Heil Christ”?

The eighty-three wasn’t one I’d seen before, but I knew it would have stood for H.C… Heil something.  Heil Christ?

…apparently Taylor and I are on the same page today.

Honestly, though, I feel like part of the number rubbing off is a more likely explanation than “Heil Christ”.

Maybe Taylor is wrong to assume the H is for Heil. Her assuming so could be a simple misdirection by Wildbow to make the reader not consider other options, in addition to explaining why she didn’t.

“Hookwolf’s Crew”?

“Hi, Colin”?