Its NOT Imp who controls Shadow Stalker. Regent is the one who controls her. He’s the one who always calls Taylor dork and back at the fight with Leviathan, he asked Tattletale if he can use his “secret weapon”. So, his secret weapon was the ability to control a human being ENTIRELY. You still don’t know Imp’s power.

*internally screaming* KRIX FOR FUCK’S SAKES

I particularly find it insane how off the mark you got in this entire chapter. You are usually so aware of some character traits, that it flabbergasted me when you missed entire syntax and foreshadowing hints throughout this chapter and ones before it. Its Regent. He has a “secret weapon”. He is the “most dangerous Master in town” the only member of the Undersiders worth watching out for. A true son of Heartbreaker, going by a different identity ever since he left home. He’s a body snatcher.

Sooo, Regent spent the last couple hours doing something to Sophia. Something that Sophia knew about from reading Regent’s file, and was completely terrified of, and something which Taylor was kind of uncomfortable with. Now at the end of the chapter we see Sophia acting exactly like Regent. Your conclusion from all of this is that IMP is controlling her???

Between Regent saying his secret weapon takes a long time to use, Piggot telling Weld that only one of the Undersiders’ Masters is of any real concern, Sophia not knowing Imp was with the Undersiders despite having access to what Piggot told Weld, Sophia freaking out when she realizes she’s helpless in front of Regent, and Sophia calling Taylor by Regent’s nickname for her right after laughing in the same cadence as him, why do you think it’s Imp and not Regent controlling Sophia at the end?

I know Shark is probably going to wait until you’ve figured it out before showing you this. Oh Krix… never change. Why would you even think it was Imp? I don’t know how Wildbow could have made things clearer. Shadow Stalker is mirroring Regent, same laugh, calling Taylor “dork”. It’s kinda nice to see you using that nogging of your to almost manage to figure out that you completely misinterpreted something though.

Okay so in my defense…

First of all, I did realize that it could be Regent controlling Sophia rather than Imp controlling both of them. It just took a little longer than it probably should – I caught on in the end of chapter post, which was literally the next post after “dork”.

Second, the chapter had been spending time on establishing Imp’s personality, and I was expecting to possibly find out her powers in that chapter, too. Mix that with my guess that the name reflected a penchant for mischief, and it’s not that far-fetched that if Imp’s power had been multiple-person body snatching, it could’ve been introduced in the form of Imp playing an ill-timed prank on everyone by taking control of Sophia. On top of all this, I had already suggested that body snatching could be a power of Imp’s.

Third, we’ve known Regent for a long time, and the only concrete thing I’m aware of that indicated he could be far more powerful than we knew was the whole “secret weapon” thing, which I had forgotten about.

Fourth, re: “most dangerous Master in town”, unless I’m missing something, that was first mentioned in 10.3, after we found out for sure that it was he who was controlling Shadow Stalker. Also, Piggot mentioned that only one of the Masters in the Undersiders was worth watching out for. At the time, it was entirely justified to think she was talking about Bitch or Skitter.

So yeah, I see how it might seem dumb in retrospect given the evidence that makes sense to you guys now, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to see something unprecedented happen and attribute it to the one whose power we don’t know yet rather than the one we’ve been following around ever since the end of Arc 2 and never seen anywhere near this level of power from.