Being tased didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected.  It was like being doused in ice water, her entire body seizing, straining, and refusing to cooperate, the pain almost secondary.  What hurt most was the way she involuntarily clenched of her jaw.  The strength with which her teeth pressed together made her worry she might crack a tooth.

Ow.

It only lasted a moment, but her body wasn’t any more cooperative after the current subsided.  She lay there, huffing small breaths, every limb unresponsive.  A deep, furious rage grew inside her chest, but she was impotent to do anything to release it.

Yeah, no catharsis for you this time.

A pair of hands seized her, sat her up.  Her arm dangled limp to her side.

Grue spoke from behind her.  “Skitter, lift her legs.  Regent, support her midsection.  Imp?  Give me a hand with her upper body, take the other shoulder.  We lift on three, alright?”

“Right,” someone said.

Imp, huh. Nice name, kinda simple but gets the point through. Her power might be something sort of mischievious?

“One, two, three!”

Time to go!

“Well,” she spoke, her tone sarcastic, “How wonderfully fucking nice for you, that you guys patched things up.  You even have a new member, congratulations.  I guess everything’s back to normal for you freaks.”

I’m not sure about that, though, if Taylor’s decision from 8.8 is any indication.

“No…”  Skitter spoke, and the bugs around her chirped, buzzed and droned to match the pitch and tone of her words.  The villain hadn’t done that when the Undersiders attacked the fundraiser, she remembered.   Her voice was quiet, which only made it more eerie.  The girl held out her hand, and Regent passed his scepter to her.

Oh damn, that’s a really cool effect. Seems Taylor has picked up some more tricks from Grue since last time.

“…Things are different now,” Skitter finished.

Skitter drove the scepter into Shadow Stalker’s body.

It’s Skitter’s turn to get some catharsis.

It was everything Shadow Stalker could do to stay solid as she felt the tines of the crowned stick biting through the fabric of her costume and into her stomach.  She resisted the instincts that two and a half years of exercising her powers had lent her, because she knew what came next.  It’ll be worse if I’m in my shadow state, maybe lethal.

Oh right, the scepter is a taser!

Rounding out the group were Tattletale, Regent and Skitter.  Tattletale smiled, her hands clasped behind her back, while Regent twirled his scepter in his fingers.  Skitter stood between the two of them.

😀

It’s so good to see the gang all together again.

The bug girl bent, then crouched until she was almost at eye level with Shadow Stalker.

A laugh escaped Shadow Stalker’s lips, building until she couldn’t balance her upper body on her weakened arm.

Shush, stop ruining Skitter’s moment.

She bent so one shoulder hit the ground, rolled onto her back, arms at her sides.  She looked up at Skitter, “All that drama, all that fucking nonsense about allegiances, betraying your team, was it a trick, some joke?”

Well… no, but there is such a thing as forgiveness. You should try it sometime.

Skitter shook her head slowly.

Shadow Stalker tried to rise, but the growling of one of the dogs intensified.  It was the only one that wasn’t pulling on its chain – the largest and most monstrous of the four, with one empty eye socket.

Good to see you too, Angelica 🙂

Between the threat of the dog and the lack of strength in the arm that Regent wasn’t fucking up, Shadow Stalker gave up and let herself slump down.

Game over.

Her opponents were revealed as the shadows passed, arranged in a rough ring around her.  Hellhound and her dogs took up half the clearing, in front of Shadow Stalker.

That’s Bitch to you, pal.

She held a metal ring in each hand, with two chains extending out from each ring.   The chains, in turn, were connected to harnesses around the heads and snouts of the ‘dogs’, each animal only a little smaller than a refrigerator.

Four dogs, then? Nice. I feel like they, besides Angelica, might be some of the dogs we met before, in 7.2 and 7.3. I should probably reread those sometime soon.

They were monstrous, with scaly, horned exteriors and exposed muscle.  Not as big or ugly as they could get, Shadow Stalker knew.  The smallest one was barking incessantly.  Three of the four were pulling on the chains, hungry to get at Shadow Stalker, clearly intent on tearing her apart.

The fourth one being Angelica, who’s had more training than the rest. I wonder if she still pulls on the leash on walkies.

Hellhound’s sharp pulls on the chains contracted the bindings around their snouts, which made them stop before they could get too close.

In other words, you really shouldn’t try to take out Bitch right now.

So was all of this planned? Did Tattletale Know that Shadow Stalker would be in the area to help protect the load, and the team quickly plan out a way to lure her away? I mean, it would make sense for Taylor’s plan to set things right to involve her confronting some of the things she perceives as wrong, such as Shadow Stalker getting to be a Ward.

Then, before she had succeeded in pulling herself all the way together, it happened again, another large form striking from another direction, passing through her lower body.

Another large form or the same large form coming back? You sound sure about it being the former, I suppose.

She sagged.  Gasped out in pain as another shape passed through her head and shoulders.  The darkness absorbed her cry so it barely reached her own ears.

Get fucked, Sophia.

It was only seconds later that the darkness dissipated.  She was on her hands and knees, barely had the strength to move, let alone fight.  She tried to raise her right crossbow, but her hand seized up, no longer under her own control as it bent to a pain like a bad Charlie horse.

A pain, or an impulse?

Yeeah, you just lost. Game over, harpy.

Her fingers curled back, and the crossbow tumbled from her fingers.  She still had one in her left hand, but she was using the heel of that hand to prop herself up.

If you try to use it, I have a feeling that one’s gonna tumble out too.

It took her only a moment to realize what that meant.  She climbed off Skitter, moved to run.  The darkness was oppressive, sluggish in moving through her, unlike ordinary air.  She was slower, wasn’t taking in enough oxygen.  

So that’s why his power messes with hers. It displaces the air, makes it hard for her to breathe in shadow form.

Against her will, her power instinctively adjusted, shifted her into a middle ground between her regular self and her shadow state.  It left her slower, heavier.

Oh jeez.

…that might explain why she had some trouble getting out of the containment foam at the gallery, besides the properties of the foam itself. Her body hadn’t adjusted back yet.

She baited me.

She sure did!

A massive shape tore through her, dissipated her entire body.

And there’s Angelina, too! Unless Rachel’s been training more of her doggos…

She pulled back together, but it was hard, painful and uncomfortable on an unspecific, fundamental level.  It left her breathing hard, feeling like she’d just put her body through five hours of the hardest exercise of her life.  Enervating, was that the right word?

I think Enervation, or something like that, is a spell in Hearthstone that gives you extra energy, but I don’t know what it actually means.

*looks it up* Drained of energy. Hm, you’d think that spell would drain energy from the opponent, then… *looks up the spell* Ah, it was Innervate, not Enervation.

Bugs were gathering inside and around her body, making it a little harder and a little more time-consuming to pull together.

I wonder if that has something to do with the Manton effect, à la how Vista’s power is hindered by the presence of people in the area she’s manipulating.

While she craned her head to one side to the next to search for something useful, her surroundings were plunged into darkness.

FUCK

YES