Tag: Arc 11

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The Merchants were responding to my bid for control.  Good.

Better to dive into it than crawl through it, I suppose.

Besides, it does imply they see you as a serious threat.

I sipped my tea and found it was lukewarm.  I took big gulps in the hopes of finishing it before it got cold.

Suddenly the coziness is fading.

One of the Merchants in the first group shouted something, loud enough for it to carry down the street, and fired a gunshot.  Impulsively, I tried to tune into my bug’s hearing and interpret what he was saying, but the strangeness of the noise stopped me.  It didn’t translate from a bug’s ‘ears’ to mine.

Hm. That’s interesting. Maybe try a different kind of bug? You’d probably run into the same issue, but maybe there’s a type that has slightly more similar hearing to humans?

The first group started running down the length of the street.  They scattered, with smaller groups of two people each heading to different buildings.

Hrm. That could be an issue. Good thing Taylor can largely fight them from where she sits.

Finding the windows boarded up and the doors locked or barricaded, they started tearing at the plywood and planks.  Some struck at the doors with their improvised weapons.

Good. Anything that slows them down helps.

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Two groups arrived within a minute of one another, each at different points of my territory.  Thirty-two people in all, with eight in the first group and twenty-four in the other.

Hrm. That’s big enough that it seems clearly planned. Maybe the Merchants will be the ones taking initiative here?

Also, the distribution reminds me a lot of the Atrocious Basejumping Benefactors back in Gestation.

Both groups reacted, jumping and backing away as my swarm swept over them.

To be expected, really.

I could feel the vibration in the air as one in the second group laughed.  The others joined him.

Guessing the first laughing one is the leader of the group. Possibly Skidmark himself?

I’d held off on attacking, just using the bugs to get a headcount and a sense of who was there.  There were men and women, young and old.  Each of them had weapons of some sort, and fifteen in total had guns.

Yeah, that really tears any doubt that they’re here for a fight to pieces.

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To be clear, under the mental block hypothesis, the overdrive isn’t Taylor getting over the mental block temporarily, but rather her being in a state that weakens the block. If she were to actually get rid of it, her power might be waaay stronger.

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I sat cross-legged in my chair on the second floor of my lair.

Hive it is!

A mug of tea was warm in my hands, and the room was dark.  Only a faint light filtered in through the slats at the top of the metal shutter that covered the window.  My mask rested on one knee.

This paragraph has a weird sort of mixture of cozy and dramatic. I like it.

My attention swept over my territory, with an emphasis on the centermost area near where I’d held my speech.

Via your power, I presume?

The reach of my power wasn’t quite good enough to extend to the outer edges of my territory, which left me anxious.

Hm, yeah, that’s not good.

I was craving one of those moments when my power would go into overdrive and increase its range.

For some reason.

I wonder if this could be a symptom of Taylor’s power actually being really fucking powerful, but restricted by something, such as a mental block. Perhaps if Taylor could get over that mental block somehow, she could control insects from an insane distance. Hell, maybe even worldwide if she gets really over it.

But what would this block be about? Hive (the Arc) and Extermination, the two examples of this sort of overdrive, have quite a few things in common. Mainly the truces, but also that the enemies were ones Taylor could go almost or entirely all out on without too many qualms. That being the reason behind the overdrive doesn’t quite work, though, because Purity’s lackeys fall under the same category as the ABB.

Maybe it has something to do with how much Taylor genuinely embraces what she’s doing? She joined in on the assault against the ABB because she wanted to. Same goes with Leviathan, even if it wasn’t exactly for the thrill of it. Meanwhile, Agitation was an act, Shell was a trap, Taylor was really against the gallery attack in Tangle, and Buzz… well, Buzz is a lot like Extermination in that Taylor wanted to help for the sake of the city and civilians. Hm. Maybe it just wasn’t intense enough, but that doesn’t sound right, especially if we’re comparing to Hive, so I guess that’s a bit of a spanner in this theory. Besides, Taylor did seem to be rather into what she was doing in the last chapter, even if she’s rather stressed right now over the Dinah situation.

Minutes passed as I followed my ‘subjects’ and did what I could to get to know them.

Like any true Big Skitter, gotta know who the subjects are.

My bugs remained on the backs of people’s elbows, at the small of their back, and I’d maybe put a small fly in their hair if it was long enough that they wouldn’t feel it.  Not enough to bother anyone, or that anyone would necessarily notice, but enough for me to track their movements.

Nice. 🙂

Infestating 11.3

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Ah, there we go, finally.

Wait.

Oh what the hell, let’s just roll with it. Infestating 11.3 it is.

Welcome back to the liveblog! It’s time for me to continue reading about Skitter’s rise to power in Skitterville, and the upcoming confrontation with the Merchants! 🙂

Last time, Skitter was approached for help by a redhead whose little brother had been taken by the Merchants. Knowing Taylor and her heroic side, and the sheer dedication she has to getting Dinah out of her bad situation, I feel like she’d want to stage an attack on the Merchants for the express purpose of saving this one child even if she didn’t already have reason to fight them. Hopefully that ends better than her dream attack on dream Coil’s dream base.

Whether or not we’re getting the beginning of her attack in this chapter is a better question than whether there will be one. That could really go either way – it depends entirely on how much worth narrating happens before the attack, which I have no idea about. I feel like it might be good to have a buffer chapter before we get into it, though.

If we don’t delve into the attack, I guess we’ll be following Taylor back at the Hive, making arrangements regarding the extra supply packs and maybe hiring some of the most eager employees (it’s a bit early for that promise of hers to have its full effect, but a couple early birds may show up), that kind of thing.

So yeah, whatever happens, let’s dive into it.

Lights! Camera! Action!

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I just noticed a thing about one of the pieces of fanart I put into my phone wallpaper rotation, namely this Coil piece by Winkle92:

(Previously featured in this post from while I was liveblogging Arc 5.)

Look at Coil’s shadow. Or rather, shadows, plural. He’s got two of them.

That’s a normal enough occurrence that someone who notices the double shadows without knowing about Coil’s power won’t question it, but it also works as really neat symbolism for the way he essentially has two versions of himself going down the timelines before he collapses them into one whole (represented by his physical body, I suppose).

I don’t actually know whether this was made before or after Arc 8, or whether this was intentional or not. In any case, it’s either a really neat detail or something that’s accidentally quite appropriate. 🙂