Maybe it was more general than that.  Not a fear of paralysis, specifically, but of helplessness.

Hm, yeah, checks out.

It’s very much worth noting that Taylor’s trigger event involved her being helpless in the locker. Also, that was the main issue she was faced with in Extermination, besides survival.

The dogs started fighting with Weld, and it didn’t seem to be a fight they would win.  They were faster, they had the advantages of numbers, I even suspected they were stronger.  Despite that, when it came down to it, Weld was a walking, talking statue.

Huh.

They could hit him hard enough to knock him down, but they couldn’t set their teeth into his flesh or deal any lasting damage.  When Weld hit them, by contrast, the hits were most definitely felt.

Ah, I suppose that makes sense.

I mean, the dogs didn’t really have much trouble with an armored Lung, but I guess it’s different when there’s no squishy flesh underneath the metal.

Still, their intervention did allow us to turn our focus to the others.  Vista was out of action, as was Clockblocker.

Which leaves Flechette and Kid Win. Flechette’s weapon is broken, so she’s down to her darts, and I think Kid was last heard from when he was in pain from pepper spray stings.

“Shadow Stalker is conscious in there!?” Weld shouted, his back to us, attention on the three advancing dogs.  None of the dogs were as big as they could get, Bitch couldn’t manage them if they were too large, but it was still the equivalent of three rather agile bears or three unnecessarily burly jungle cats joining the fight, each with some added natural protection in the horned growths of bone and calcified muscle.

Yeah, apparently she is.

And yeah, keeping your attention on the dogs is probably a good call. If there’s anyone here who can put a bulk in your armor, it’s the dogs.

“Since a little while ago,” Regent answered.

Ah, so she only woke up with the backfire or shortly before it.

That was disturbing.  I didn’t have a better way of putting it.  I’d almost been paralyzed by Leviathan in the Endbringer attack, but even before that, the idea of being left conscious but unable to move of my own volition had always spooked me.

It’s a pretty disturbing idea, yeah. Isn’t it fairly common to have nightmares about that, too?

I’d never had a relative in the hospital suffering from anything like that, and I couldn’t remember seeing any movies or shows on television that might have put the idea in my head at an impressionable age.  Still, it was one of the first places my mind went when I thought about worst case scenarios and horrific fates.

I have a mouth and I still can’t scream.

It had been in my thoughts more over the past two or three years, and the idea had been showcased in more than one nightmare over the past two weeks.

That last part would presumably be because of the run-in with paralysis during Extermination, but is there a particular reason she’s been thinking about it more over the last few years?

A series of crashes and the sound of breaking glass showering onto tile announced the arrival of Bitch’s dogs.

Hey, doggos! 😀

They had barreled their way through the bulletproof glass that led into the lobby.

Just goes to show that bulletproof doesn’t equal hellhound-proof.

Weld spun to face them, and Shadow Stalker abandoned her fight with him, using the opportunity to finish reloading her crossbows and fire one at Vista, who was hunkered down on the floor, my swarm all over her.

It’s not even the first time Shadow Stalker attacks Vista today…

At least the girl wouldn’t be in further pain from what my bugs had done.  I could inflict pain if it meant getting a job done properly.  That didn’t mean I liked doing it.

That’s probably a good balance. When someone likes inflicting pain, you get people like Shadow Stalker.

Shadow Stalker moved to load her crossbows, but her movements were jittery and jerky to an even greater extent than they had been a second ago.

Hm… it seems like she doesn’t quite have full control back yet.

She stopped midway through the motion, her head turning as she looked from one hand to the other, and then looked up at Weld, who was in close proximity to her.

And if she’s not in full control yet, Regent might be able to take it back.

“H-h-help.”  She stuttered.

A fraction of a second later, Regent was in control again, and Shadow Stalker was attempting to repeat her maneuver from earlier, driving an arrowhead into Weld’s other eye, moving quickly and with as much grace as ever.

Aaand there we go.

He swatted her hand aside, and she entered her shadow state to avoid his follow-up swing with his club.

If nothing else, I guess this event might act as motivation for Weld. Though maybe he should be trying to attack Regent rather than “Shadow Stalker”.

She’d been fighting with Weld, and Weld almost fell over when he swung and she didn’t enter her shadow state.

If she did just regain control of her body, that would be because she wasn’t expecting to have (the ability) to do it herself. If she was even aware of what was happening while she was controlled. If she wasn’t she just essentially woke up to Weld attacking her and total chaos around her.

He couldn’t stop all of his momentum, but he stepped close and let his upper arm hit her instead.  They stumbled together, Shadow Stalker continuing to scream like she was trying to empty her lungs of every last trace of oxygen.

Probably not so much a scream of anger as a lingering scream of pain from the torture, I suppose.

She raised her crossbow in my general direction, then moved, almost staggered, one step to the side.  From her new vantage point, she targeted Regent; her movements weren’t fluid, and her shot flew past him.

Yeah, this is her alright.

Well on the positive side, at least she found someone to hate more than Skitter and Grue.

…is that a positive?

Probably not.

It hit Tattletale instead with a glancing blow, raking across her collarbone to penetrate her shoulder at a shallow angle.  Tattletale was spun off-balance and fell.

Ouch.

Wait, “penetrated”? That was real, deadly ammo, wasn’t it. The tranq bolts are designed to not penetrate too much.

Flechette threw a dart into the foam canister, and both Imp and Tattletale backed away as foam began spilling out of the hole, rapidly expanding to partially cover the uniformed officer.

Good thinking, Flechette.

After a moment’s pause, she threw a spike of metal into every other canister on the other fallen guards.  One even erupted into a pressurized spray, jetting up at an angle to hit the wall, creating a growing barrier a few feet in front of me, partially blocking me from reaching the rest of the combatants.

I wonder if the Wards or PRT officers called for backup in some way. Imagine the awkwardness of everyone, including the Wards, getting stuck in one huge blob of foam until someone arrives to find them there.

Before Flechette could turn her darts on us, Regent reached out, causing her to fumble and drop it.  A second later, he grunted and fell to all fours.  Nothing I could see had touched him.

…what’s up now?

A backfire?  So easily?

Oh yeah, I think that possibility was mentioned at some point… Is it because controlling Sophia and trying to use the impulse power on someone else at the same time is overexerting his power?

I was already turning to check when a primal scream tore its way from Shadow Stalker’s throat.

…shit. If she just got freed from Regent’s control, she ain’t gonna be happy.

“Hey!” A girl shouted.  I looked and saw a horned girl crouched by one of the fallen PRT officers, holding the foam sprayer.  Imp.  Right, it was Imp.

Hah, nice, Taylor already forgot about… uh… again. And then immediately remembered her, which I think suggests that either she just turned off the power, or she has the ability to make specific people remember her again for a moment despite the initial forgetting being universal or AoE.

She looked at Tattletale, “It won’t fire!”

Ah, yeah, if she actually needs to communicate with the others, it makes a lot of sense to turn off the power for a moment.

Tattletale hurried over, grabbed the fallen officer’s arm, and lifted it over to the handle of the gun.  She put his finger on the trigger and aimed the gun at Clockblocker, unloading spray on top of his upper body just as he managed to heave the fallen officer off of himself.

Fingerprint trigger lock. Nice… I guess they learned from their experiences at the gallery.

Clockblocker closed the distance and plunged into the darkness after Grue.  He emerged out the other side, and the darkness dissipated behind him, revealing Grue, frozen in time.

Well, that’s a problem.

Also, I know it’s done like this to dramatically reveal the frozen Grue, but it seems he needs to continually channel the darkness for it to not dissipated. Up to this point it’s generally looked like he needed to either dissipate it actively or wait a while for it to happen on its own, but I guess not.

Even the shadows smouldering around Grue’s body faded, revealing his motorcycle leathers and the helmet with the skull-face molded into it.

Not something you see very often if you’re the ones fighting him.

Which was bad.  It could be up to ten minutes until Grue was back in action, and we couldn’t necessarily afford to babysit his body until he reanimated.

Yeah, this is quite inconvenient.

The other PRT officer that was holding me broke away when a girl with a horned mask drove the wooden end of a fire axe into his shoulder.

Huh, who’s this?

Regent made Clockblocker stumble, and the horned girl shoved the PRT officer into the boy.  They both fell in a heap.

Nice.

So yeah.  It worked.

Ahaha

Clockblocker had been in the lead of the group as we’d all headed toward the elevator, and had been delayed by the fallen PRT uniforms and his collapsing teammates.  His costume covered his entire body, preventing the bugs from getting to him, so once he got past his allies, there wasn’t much to get in his way.

Ah, right, there was that whole outfit swap back in Agitation. Taylor’s approach back then wouldn’t have worked without that.

I mean, she could still swarm him and trick him into freezing bugs all around him, though I think he’ll be prepared for that tactic this time. “Fool me once, holy shit my orifices are full of time-stopped bugs somebody help me. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

He charged straight for Grue, and Grue responded by shrouding his immediate vicinity in darkness, though he couldn’t do much else.  One of Flechette’s bolts had nailed the sides of one of his boots to the ground – the other shot had missed, maybe because she couldn’t see his foot and hadn’t wanted to put a spike through his actual flesh.

Ah. I thought for a second that some Imp shenanigans were going on here, but looking back, the narration didn’t actually specify that the second shot definitely hit, and it was reasonable for Taylor to assume it did.

I had discovered that I could use hair spray to coat the abdomens and stingers of my bugs, and then dip said abdomens and stings into some of the capsaicin.

Hah! I was right!

She might not have found a defense, but she did find a way to improve the offense.

With a bowl of each in liquid form and two single file lines of bugs, I could dose a fair number before I went out in costume.  It did wind up killing some of the less durable ones eventually, either through the hairspray obstructing breathing or the capsaicin getting on the bug, but the end result was that I’d stumbled onto a weapon while trying to experiment with defenses.  I had figured out how to use my bugs as a delivery mechanism, smearing pepper spray onto fresh stings and bites.

I love it.

I could jam their abdomens into people’s noses, mouths and eyes to cause intense burning and pain to the point that it made them nauseous.

“Getting bugs in your nose, mouth or eyes wasn’t uncomfortable enough.”
– Taylor Hebert, 2k11

Flechette screamed, falling to her knees, her hands to her face.  One of the PRT uniforms that was holding me let me go to stagger blindly toward the front desk.  I struggled to get away from the other one, but he held me tight even as he bent over, threatening to topple to the ground with me beneath him.

Damn nice work, Taylor.

Also jeez, imagine if she’d done this before the Clockblocker fight in Agitation.