I’d let Brian’s name slip.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  I wasn’t thinking straight.

It’s very understandable, given the situation.

“But no, I’m not going to do that,” she said.  “I don’t censor my art because it offends people.”

oh my cod she’s so precious ahahaha

“I could convince you,” I told her.  My swarm flowed forward, and she backed away.  Her eyes, one green and one blue, flashed as she took in the breadth of the swarm, the composition of it.

Eyy, she did do the heterochromia thing!

She was probably already brainstorming some solution.

That or studying the movement of the bugs in order to figure out how the power works.

I wasn’t going to give her a chance.  I drew my weapons, one in each hand, and charged through the swarm, straight for her.

Don’t forget the protection she’s given herself.

At least you’re on relatively equal footing thanks to the silk costume, but I really would not underestimate Bonesaw’s melee skills after her moves in 13.6.

“What did you do to them?”

Oh, right, the darts may very well not just put people to sleep.

“Paralyzed them, obviously.  Living flesh is so much easier to work with.”

Hmm.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the Manton effect, if that’s even a thing.

Paralyzed.  I glanced at my teammates.  Why couldn’t I have finished their costumes?  Stupid.  I’d spread myself too thin.  I should have finished one costume, then moved on to the next.  Maybe then I would have saved someone.

I suppose that does make sense, but there’s no way you’d be able to predict this. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it. You’re doing that with too many things already.

“Oh, and I dosed them with a little something extra.  Because Jack said there’s no point in doing anything halfway.”  She gave me a sage nod, as if sharing some universal truism.

Right. Now what the hell kind of something extra did she add…

“You’re going to give them an antidote to whatever you injected into them, then you’re going to go to Brian and you’re going to fix him.”

“Oh… do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, fiiine.”

Incidentally, Bonesaw might not understand who Skitter is referring to as “Brian”.

“Brian?  Oh!  You mean the boy we put in the freezer!

Well, I suppose there weren’t too many options.

I’m still trying to figure out where his power comes from.  The darkness comes from inside him, but what’s the source?

The edgy, dramatic answer would be his heart, I suppose.

Besides the usual, I mean.  So I took everything apart to see, but he wasn’t cooperating.  I told him I’d make the pain stop forever if he would just show me, but he was so stubborn!”  She stamped one foot.

This explains a lot about the state he’s in.

I glanced down.  Three pea-sized darts with flesh-toned feathering were stuck in the fabric of my costume.  One in my dress, one in a panel of armor on my chest, and another in the side of my stomach.

“You know, shooting me with these is also kind of rude. Not to mention turning my teammate into a freezer room.”

“Bonesaw,” I growled.

Taylor goes for the less bantery approach, of course.

“Skitter, was it?  Bug girl!  I really want to find out how your power works!

That’s not a good thing, for Skitter anyway.

I’ll take your brain apart and find the mechanism so I can copy it!  Is your costume spider silk?  That’s awesome!  You know the right materials to work with!  No wonder my darts didn’t work!”

Hey, at least she appreciates good work when she sees it!

I gathered my bugs, directing them her way.

Wait.

Are you sure that’s actually her?

“Wait!”  Tattletale cried out.

Once again, this Arc is named in a way that implies traps.

I turned to see her stagger.  I whipped around to see Bonesaw.  She was whirling around in response to Tattletale’s shout, her eyes wide.  There was a chain stretching from her wrist to the base of the window.

Yeah, that ain’t Bonesaw.

Not Bonesaw.  Decoy.

Which of course raises the question: Where is the real Bonesaw?

Tattletale crashed to the ground, followed soon after by Trickster.

I think the answer might be “too close for comfort”.

Sundancer and Ballistic crashed to the ground a second later. 

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

“Why won’t you go down!?”  The voice was petulant.

Hm, interesting. Is Skitter somehow immune to whatever way Bonesaw is doing this?

I followed the voice and saw one of the corpses move, rising to its feet.  Bonesaw unzipped the covering of dead flesh she’d covered herself in and shucked it off.

Ahaha, nice disguise!

She was wearing a yellow sundress and yellow rubber boots with a short blue jacket, but her hair and each article of her clothing were stained dark brown with the blood that had been on the corpse.

It’s probably a wonder you can even see that they used to be yellow and blue.

A small tube was in one of her hands, “I shot you with three darts!  It’s rude!”

Ah, yeah, darts that couldn’t penetrate the costume did actually cross my mind. I’m not sure why I didn’t write it.

Better not allow the temporary changes to the costume to reveal any skin, or turn the back of your head towards Bonesaw.

Also I love that Bonesaw thinks it’s “rude” to not go down when being darted. Best antagonist, hands down. 😛

Let’s see if we can’t catch a Bonesaw!

I was using my bugs to track the positions of the Nine, where Siberian and Crawler were in the thick of the enemy.  Mannequin apparently wasn’t aware of my presence, so I had my first real opportunity of tracking his movements as he scaled walls and disappeared into manholes to emerge half a street away.

Nice.

Burnscar used her fire to bombard the enemy and divide them.

Going for the heads-on approach, huh?

Another reason why Bonesaw staying matters: It might mean the others will try to circle back after drawing the enemy away.

Jack was more pragmatic, striking from hiding, threatening his decoys to get them to run out of cover and draw enemy fire, and using every hiding space that was available.  He was quick, smart, and devastating in how he operated.

That’s Jack in a nutshell, yeah. Quick, smart and devastating.

No movement was wasted, and every time he emerged from cover and swiped his knife, someone suffered for it.  As far as I could tell, he was evading Night and Fog.

Those ought to be some of the worst enemies to be up against with this tactic, though. Fog cares not if you’re hiding around the corner.

I suppose Night’s not exactly in a good position to use her power in this battle.

My bugs could detect some noise from him that I was parsing as a mocking laughter.  Maybe my imagination.  Probably my imagination.

I could see it being the case.

I looked at the others.  Sundancer was on the other side of the kitchen, hands on the edge of the sink.  Ballistic had his arms folded.  Trickster leaned against one counter, silent, not looking at the scene.

I really can’t blame any of them. Sunny’s probably halfway to puking, and I can totally understand Trickster not wanting to look at this mess.

“Every second you make him go on like this is cruel,” she said, her voice hard.

What does Grue himself think?

“So is every second you spend arguing with me.  I’m not negotiating, here.  I’m willing for him to suffer if it means there’s a chance we can help him.”

I’m on Taylor’s side in theory, but in practice I don’t think there’s much of a chance. At least if we don’t take Grue’s protagonist armor into account.

She met my eyes, looking like she wanted to slap me, yell at me, or both.  “Fine.  Then let’s hurry.”

I gave Brian one last look over my shoulder before I hurried off, leaving him behind.  The others followed.

See you later, Mr. Freeze…r Room.

Brian moved his lips, but no sound came out.  He tried to raise his head, as much as the ceiling allowed, his eyes raised towards the sky.  There was a cauterised scar just above his collarbone.

Ahh. They removed his vocal cords.

“I could make it quick,” Ballistic said.

“No,” I told him.

Look, Taylor, I understand, but in this situation euthanasia is probably justified. I don’t think even Panacea could help him here, due to the technological stuff involved.

But time to say goodbyes might be nice, at least.

“It’d be a mercy.”

“No,” I shook my head.  “No.  We have options.  Panacea-”

I considered that several paragraphs before I actually managed to work it into my commentary, yet I still ended up talking about it right before Taylor did.

“Is nowhere to be found,” Tattletale told me, “And given what happened with Mannequin, she’s going to be as far as she can get from downtown.”

That is also true.

“Then Bonesaw,” I said, clenching my fists.  “Bonesaw can fix him.”

How do you intend to get her to do that?

Does Regent’s control work with tinker powers?

“She’s not going to fix him.  I doubt she’d do it on pain of death,” Tattletale told me.  “Skitter-”

“We’ll try,” I told her.  “At least try.”

Fair enough.