“Guess I don’t need to worry about the villain who saw my face, now.”  Shadow Stalker went solid and drew the razor-sharp tip of her bolt across Skitter’s throat.

The fabric didn’t cut.

uh… right, spider silk, really tough stuff.

Skitter struggled to get free, but Shadow Stalker’s body weight was too much for her to slide free.  She gripped the girl’s wrists with her hands, pinned them to the ground.

Oh good, seems she’s conscious.

“Irritating,” she spat the word.  She could always go into her shadow state, stick the arrow inside the girl and then return to normal.  The problem with going that route was that it left a very characteristic imprint in the victim.

Hm, yeah, I suppose it’d be easy to identify the murderer.

She would need a way of covering up the evidence.  Something she could hit Skitter with afterward that would make the wound too messy to analyze for evidence.

And I’m very deliberately using that word. It’s what she is. She’s a murderer.

Skitter cocked her head a little, as if analyzing Shadow Stalker from a different perspective.

She hasn’t seen how Sophia acts while alone in costume before, nor has she (to my knowledge) gotten to see Sophia in action, in costume, while she knew it was her.

I feel like this moment is Skitter thinking about the fact that this is Sophia, a supposed hero, catching Skitter, a supposed villain.

“What are you looking at?” Shadow Stalker spat the word, “Nothing to say?  No last words?  No begging?  No fucking apologies?”

Skitter went limp, letting her head rest against the ground, the water lapping over most of her mask.  Dark curls fanned out in the water around her, swaying as the water rippled.

Uh.

Taylor?

She loaded her crossbows, fired at the figure on the far left and the far right of the trio.  No reaction.  She dove after the remaining one.

Hm. But is that one real? Maybe she did pull the stunt I described after all?

She made contact, drove the bug girl’s face down into the water.  She shifted into her shadow state, straddling Skitter.

Ah, looks like she found the right one.

The girl turned over of her own volition – easy enough, as Shadow Stalker was barely solid, but when Skitter tried to stand, Shadow Stalker resumed her normal form for a second – just long enough to force the girl back down.

Well, shit. What now, Skitter?

Picking one of her non-tranquilizer bolts from the cartridge, she held the point of the ammunition to Skitter’s throat like a knife, “Game over, you little freak.”

It might seem like it, but is it?

I’m not sure, because Taylor is a lot more resourceful than I am.

More bugs were flowing from the area to join the swarm, bolstering its number enough for it to split again.  She wasn’t close enough to be sure of a hit, and she didn’t want to waste her good arrows, so she delayed, leaped forward to close the gap.

If there’s enough bugs in the area, she could potentially keep doing this until she finds a hiding spot to pull a proper shell game con from while Shadow Stalker’s getting too frustrated to consider it anymore.

I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen, but it might work in theory.

The swarm split once more, making for four vaguely human figures in total, each cloaked in a cloud of flying insects.

Oh damn, more shells this time. Nice!

Shadow Stalker snarled a curse word.

One figure turned on the spot, moved as if to slide past Shadow Stalker.  She lashed out, striking it in the throat, failed to hit anything solid.

Yeah, if you knew Taylor better, you wouldn’t even bother with that one. Although in that case she might anticipate that and make that the real one… “I know you know I know” can get pretty complicated sometimes, and suddenly nobody knows anything.

Shadow Stalker closed the distance, placing herself at the intersection between the two bug-shrouded figures.  Holding each crossbow out in an opposite direction, she fired at both targets at once, snapping her attention from one to the next in an attempt to see which reacted to the hit.

Huh, nice. Choosing all the shells at once is one way to find the prize, if it is actually there.

That said, Taylor could still have both shells react, regardless of whether she’s under one of them.

One slowed, began to topple.  She lunged after, in pursuit, loaded her crossbow and fired two more shots into the center mass of Skitter’s body while airborne, then kicked downward with both feet as she landed, to shove the girl into the ground.

Except Taylor is clever and would know that you’d attack the one that reacted most visibly…

Her body weight dissolved the blurry silhouette into a mess of bugs.  A trick.

Gotcha!

Snarling, Shadow Stalker wheeled around, ran in the direction the other half of the swarm had gone  Had the girl’s armor taken the bolt?  Had the crossbow shot missed?

Both are quite possible.

Skitter had known the fence was electrified, judging by the route she’d taken through the fire escape.  The area here didn’t have any power, so the question was whether it something this area’s inhabitants had set up to protect themselves… or was it a trap Skitter had put in place well in advance?  No.  More likely the girl had studied this area before carrying out any crimes.

That would be typical of her, yeah.

Still, it troubled her that the girl had thought to use the fence like she had.  She really didn’t like the idea that the villain had not only seen her face, but that she might have figured out one of her weaknesses.

Or, if she hadn’t, and just needed to get past there for some other reason, that she just did.

Two, if she counted the pepper spray.  Being permeable was a problem when she absorbed gases, vapors and aerosols directly into her body.

Ah, yeah, that’s a problem. Presumably makes her particularly susceptible to toxic gasses and such too.

It wouldn’t affect her if she was in her shadow state, and it would eventually filter out, but if she were forced to change back, she’d suffer as badly as anyone, if not worse.

I see. I suppose ending up with pepper spray inside every part of your body would be rather… uncomfortable.

The fence was electrified.

Shadow Stalker snarled at what had almost been a grave mistake, entered her shadow state and leaped up and over the fence, being careful not to touch it.

Yeah, I suppose that could’ve gotten nasty. I wonder if Taylor was planning for it?

One of the reasons she couldn’t move through walls at will, beyond the huge break in her forward momentum and the excruciating pain that came with stalling in the midst of a wall, was wiring.  She remained just as vulnerable, maybe even more vulnerable, to electrocution.

Interesting.

The people in the PRT labs couldn’t tell her if she could be killed by electrocution – traditional organs were barely present in her shadow state – but it was one of those things that couldn’t be properly tested without risking killing the subject.

“Yes, miss Stalker, it appears you can be killed by electrocution. …miss Stalker?”

End result?  She had to be careful where she went, had received tinker-made lenses to help her spot such threats.

Ah, so they’re specifically for detecting electricity, not other things. Fair enough.

If Taylor’s paying attention (which she almost always is), she might’ve noticed Sophia’s hesitation and decision to jump the fence rather than walk through it. If she’s figured out Sophia’s weakness now, that might help her find a way out of this situation.

Apparently deciding the fire escape wasn’t a great option,

They have failed her again.

Skitter climbed over the railing and leaped a half-story down to the pavement, putting a chain link fence and some accumulated trash bags between herself and Shadow Stalker.

Skitter: “None may enter my fortress of garbage!”

Moron.  I can walk through that fence.  She loaded her crossbow, aimed, and fired through the fence at the girl.

Ah, right. Good point.

A flash and spray of sparks erupted as the shot made contact with the fence.  Skitter stumbled as the bolt hit her, but Shadow Stalker couldn’t see if it had done any damage.

Electric fence… Can you still walk through that?

No, what concerned her was the flash.  She ignored the fact that Skitter was disappearing, entered her solid state and touched the side of her mask.

Lenses snapped into place, showing a blurry image of the alley in shades of dark green and black.  The chain link fence, however, was lit up in a very light gray.

Tinkertech scanners, I suppose.

Similarly glowing, a wire was stapled to the brick of the building next to the fence, leading to a large, pale blob inside the building.  A generator.

Yep. This thing’s electric. If you want to go through it, you might have to disable that wire.

Probably faster to just leap over it.

Good runner, but I’m faster.

Shadow Stalker didn’t need to slosh through the water, but she knew she would be faster than the other girl even if she did.

She wasn’t on the track and field team for nothing.

It wasn’t just her shadow state eliminating wind resistance, or the lightness of her body.  She was a trained runner.

Yep.

She bounded from one wall of the alley to the one opposite, staying above the water, pursuing her target.

Skitter was going up the steps of a fire escape.  Shadow Stalker aimed and fired a bolt – the girl ducked, and the shot clipped a railing instead.

Skitter and fire escapes have a poor relation from before, but it looks like she’s giving them a second chance.

Good reflexes.  Shadow Stalker brushed away at the bugs massing around her.  Or do your bugs help you watch what I’m doing?  Disturbing little freak.

Little bit of both, I think.