I wonder if any of Bakuda’s bombs could manage to hurt Crawler. She was capable of reproducing people’s powers as bombs, and seemingly only needed to have observed them in order to do it. She couldn’t have reproduced the one power we know for sure can hurt Crawler so far, because she was arrested and killed before that power was bestowed on Scrub, but she may have had access to other powers that could do it.
Tag: Arc 14
Prey 14.6
…thriller, thriller night… la la lalala la la, lala… beast about to strike… thriller, thriller night… la la lalala la la, lala… thing with forty eyes, girl…
Oh, hi! Sorry, didn’t see you there. Maybe I should get some extra eyes of my own.
So. Last time Weld and Skitter worked together to take on Mannequin and to a lesser extent Crawler. Neither of them are properly defeated yet, though now at least the other heroes have joined the fray. But Crawler’s coming to fuck them up.
I think this chapter is going to be very much a direct continuation of the last chapter, a part 2 of the Mannequin/Crawler battle (with more focus on Crawler). Eventually we might also make it to the second barrage of bombs. I wonder, will Taylor have to figure that out by seeing the heroes withdraw, or if someone who recognizes that Skitter doesn’t deserve to get blown to smithereens – Weld or Legend, I’m thinking – will show the courtesy of warning her, and maybe even help her get out of the blast zone. Or maybe she’ll have to find out the hard way.
I’m definitely hoping for the second option. I like both Legend and Weld for being genuinely good guys, and I’d like them to keep that up. I think Legend is still distracted by Siberian, but Weld at least ought to warn Taylor– fuck, I just remembered, Legend is probably still the only one who knows about the second wave before Piggot orders the retreat, isn’t he. Damn it.
Well. Guess it’s gonna be time to dance at some point.
For now, though, let’s jump in and try to do something about Crawler!
The Table of Contents currently has all the chapters in Prey under chapter 13.
Oh, whoops, I forgot to put an Arc header and didn’t notice because I edit the Tebble in HTML mode now. Fixed, thanks!
Well in on AU-fanfic the Endbringers never show up among other spoilery things so parahumans are treated like the mutants in x-men. Taylor and Sophia have to put aside their differences to avoid the all-parahuman Birdcage pretty much in the first chapter. It was a pretty decent fic with 270k words. Sadly it will take some time until getting you fic-recommendations makes sense but I’m letting you know it exists.
Huh, that sounds pretty cool!
I wonder how the Birdcage exists if parahumans are hunted down and Leviathan never destroyed Newfoundland. I guess maybe Dragon’s creator has been arrested and forced to use his talents to make the Birdcage possible, and then maybe placed in it himself (though putting the involuntary designer of a prison inside that prison is a stupid move)?
There is a fanfic that puts Mr. Incredible and Frozone in the Wormverse.
Nice. I suppose they’d be fairly basic heroes here, though perhaps unused to the way the Wormverse handles capes if it’s a matter of them traveling there from their home world.
The reverse honestly sounds more interesting, provided it takes place before the events of the movies.
“All that said, ‘Worm but superheroes are driven into hiding by the government á là The Incredibles” would probably be a pretty cool AU.’” Such fanfictions do exist. One even has about a hundred chapters and a sequel planned.
Liz, Liz, Liz! You need to tell Krix about Divided!
It’s not quite The Incredibles, but I think it’s close enough, what with the government chasing Parahumans into hiding.
Cool! I wonder if these are the same one the first ask mentioned, the 270k long one.
(Also I feel like I should clarify that the Incredibles-like hiding I’m talking about is with the government’s help, rather than persecution. It’s more like a witness protection program.)
In the topic of boat licenses: in my state, a boat with a motor has to be registered with the state government (like a car). To drive a boat, you must have a license. From the ages of 12-14, you can have a learner’s license, which lets you drive the boat if there is someone 21 or older with a valid boaters in the boat also. Once you turn 14, you can get your actual boaters license. This is supposedly some of the stricter laws in the US.
I was expecting asks about the origin of the meme (a connection hiccup causing the message “Yeah… I’m not sure how their parents were ok with that. Pretty sure you need to be 16 for a boat license” to send twice and the rest of us making fun of that). I was not expecting interesting trivia about boat license laws. 😛
Those do sound like fairly reasonable laws to me, honestly, though I’m not sure how the founding fathers were ok with that. Pretty sure the government needs to be 16 for a reasonable lawmaking license
Interesting how all her onscreen defeats have been something being put on her and then her force field getting broken, huh?
It’s almost like it’s Victoria’s weakness. 😛
re: Yours and Taylor’s movie preferences: I think it’s safe to say that most of our films were butterflied away with the advent of parahumans, so they have an entirely different set of media after a time. We saw that even the Star Wars Prequels were already different on earth Aleph. DC and Marvel are probably not as popular if they still exist and Godzilla movies probably have to be imported from Aleph because of the Endbringers. With Leviathan they would certainly be offensive for Taylor
That’s fair, though I don’t see much reason for that to cause tips on how to fire a gun to be more common in Wormverse movies. Though I suppose maybe the genre of movies you’d see such tips in (action movies) would be even more popular than it already is here.
(Honestly, I feel like superheroes being real would have the opposite effect on that genre.)
Also it’s worth noting that Godzilla as a franchise started long before the parahumans and Endbringers arrived, so a bunch of the older ones would still exist, though they might be hard to track down. Although maybe they’re studied by amateur historians (and maybe even professional ones) as a relic of how the world saw kaiju before they became a real threat. Same goes for superheroes – how pre-80′s comics shaped the understanding and reception of the real capes when they did show up sounds like a very interesting project for a history class.
Catching up on backlog, and saw that post 176488074799 was mistagged “Arc 13”. Side note: thought for sure you would get Siberian’s secret when Brian discussed the striped, extremely powerful Monochrome Brian being like a hole in reality, but I guess WB spread those clues out too carefully 😛
Fixed, thank you!
A hole in reality… I do suppose if the monochromes are literally that in some capacity, that might be the reason they’re immune to powers. You can’t target solid nothingness.
If Agitation!Taylor could see herself … talk about character development. How do you think she would feel about “Skitter”, and how do you think she would react to Sophia being a hero shortly after her trigger event?
“What the fuck are you doing, future me?!”
And yeah, if Taylor found out then, it’d probably ruin her perception of heroes pretty harshly. Like it did when she found out later, but worse, because she hadn’t had the Undersiders and Armsmaster to prepare her for that kind of shaking of her worldview. At that time, Taylor had some pretty rigid ideas of black and white morality between villains and heroes, which had already been largely torn down before she discovered Sophia’s identity in Extermination.
I’m not sure which extreme she would end up swinging towards – either she’d drop her idea of becoming a hero entirely, or she’d lean into it much harder and set her aim towards making things better, like she did at the end of Extermination, from the start. She might also be more willing to accept her position in the Undersiders as a genuine thing, making the Decision earlier.
End of Prey 14.5
This was another good one. 🙂
I found myself talking to Taylor’s deaf ears a lot regarding two issues: Going back into the fray (though given the trouble Cache was in, it was probably worth it), and her attitude towards Amy after Amy showed frankly not unreasonable restraint in helping villains (not helped by Amy’s reluctant addition to Bailey proving unwanted, though that’s really not Amy’s fault). I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, though. The tension in the chapter is somewhat aided by the knowledge that the Bakuda carpet is coming in time (though presumably only after the Protectorate and Wards get out of the blast zone), and the bits with Amy serve to show Taylor’s harder side when she has things to do and little patience for those who stand in the way of that.
I very much enjoyed Taylor fighting alongside Weld. Not just for shippy reasons, either – my shipping of them has faded to the point where that’s just an afterthought – but because it’s neat to see them silently slip into teamwork like they did, and it’s an interesting break from the team dynamics we’re used to. Weld also cemented his worth as a quite capable fighter when it counts, which was cool.
I do kinda hope there’s an answer for why the cars didn’t stick to his blades, though. That was kind of distracting. I’m guessing I’ll have a few asks about that, unless answering it is spoilery, so I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys have to say about it.
Crawler’s finally getting some significant attention, which is fun. The bigger kitty seems to be a bit of a raging asshole, but that’s to be expected. The Nine can’t all be Bonesaw. Only the ones Bonesaw can perform plastic and brain surgery on can be Bonesaw.
So, next time, I guess we’re going to be dealing with Crawler somehow. Maybe the silk technique could work again, but Skitter is very low on bugs now compared to the millions she had before the bombs, and the surviving spiders might be out of silk.
Also, it might not be next chapter, but I think Grue using his darkness is going to become relevant. “Grue was also using his darkness, oddly enough.” with no further elaboration is very suspicious. Maybe he’ll be borrowing a bit of power that helps him save the day?
So yeah… see you there!
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