“Right now, Mannequin and Crawler are attacking the Wards.  Your sister is with them.”

Let’s see if Amy’s confidence is partially related to her having spent some of her off-screen time thinking over what Victoria said and deciding that “fuck it, maybe I don’t want her to be my sister either”.

I could see her expression change at hearing that.

“She’s tough, she’ll be okay.”

Okay, good, looks like she didn’t have that big piece of development off-screen.

“Not in this case.  She was stored away in some other dimension by Cache’s power.  If he dies before he gets her out-”

She paled.

Yeeeeeah.

“Idiot,” I muttered.  “Can’t waste any more time on you.”

Taylor, you’ve been making so much progress with Amy. Don’t throw it away like this.

Before she could reply, I turned to my teammates, “I need bombs.  Grenades, something I can drop from above and do some damage.”

Okay, yeah, that ought to work better than simply “something heavy”. Though I do stand by what I said about Mannequin reinforcing himself against explosions.

“Here,” Ballistic said.  He undid one of his belts and handed it to me.  Six grenades were placed around it.  It was too wide for my waist, so I hung it around my neck instead.

A badass necklace like few others.

Amy stepped forward and put her hands on my bug.  I went out of my way to ignore her.

*spritzes Taylor’s mask with bug spray* No. Bad Taylor. Be nice.

“What?” I hurried to get off him.  “Is he okay?”

“It’s a he?”  Tattletale asked.

Taylor seems to have decided so. But whether she did it arbitrarily or based on bug genitalia or other sexual characteristics of some kind, I can’t tell you.

Amy stepped forward a little, “Its legs work through something like hydraulics.  When it’s flying, it diverts those fluids to the flight system.  Do you know how hard it was to make that thing able to fly?  It’s not like I’ve practiced this sort of thing.”

Ahh. So it’s walk or fly with this one. That probably contributed to the takeoff troubles, too.

Also, thank you, Amy. You did a fantastic job. 🙂

“It’s fantastic,” I said.  “Really.  Thank you.  Do you think you could work on making him a little bigger while I get prepared?  I can supply the bugs.”

Hmm. That sounds difficult, but hey, making the whole thing in the first place was probably way more difficult.

“No.”

That’s fair.

I was midway to turning towards Tattletale when Amy refused me.  “No?  If it’s the physical limitations of something that big, then maybe the nervous system, or if you could copy over some flight instincts so I don’t need to devote so much focus-”

I was unsure about whether it was the physical limitations or Amy limiting how much she wants to help these villains, but judging by this paragraph, I take it it’s the latter.

“No, Skitter.  It’s not that I can’t.  I won’t.”

Yeah.

Also, she sounds way more confident right now than we’ve heard her ever since Interlude 11h. That seems like a good sign.

I turned back to Amy.

She shook her head, “This isn’t a luxury.  It’s not a present from me to you.  You said you needed some help escaping, you needed some mobility?  Fine.  This is it.”

That is very fair. Don’t look a gift beetle in the mandibles, Taylor.

I turned around and headed for my companions.  I withdrew my cell phone.

“Need gear,” I told Tattletale.  “Mannequin’s attacking the heroes and Crawler’s approaching.”

Gear?

“Got it.”

Sundancer’s orb appeared in the sky, flickered, and disappeared.  A flare.  I headed in that direction.

That’s a pretty nice use of the power.

As Tattletale had said, Sundancer was using her orb to try to clear the way.  Grue was also using his darkness, oddly enough.

Hmm. Looking out for the Nine, maybe, or other capes whose powers may come in handy?

The others stood by, watching, arranged so they were watching all potential avenues of attack.

I appreciate that they haven’t let their guard down just yet.

I landed, and I couldn’t get the beetle’s legs under him to brace our landing.  He hit his stomach, his legs squashing against his underside.

You’ll get the hang of it.

I had to remind myself he was a specialist in hostile environments, and they didn’t get much more hostile than this.  He was a genius, a problem solver, and a survivor.  He was relentless, and as much as I’d managed to take the advantage in our previous confrontations, that was because he’d been out of his element, taking us on directly.

And this time… he’s in his element…

Yeeah, maybe avoid direct confrontation if you can help it.

This was Mannequin’s specialty: attacking from the indirect angle, at the unexpected moment to target the weak.  He favored Tinkers both because they were often vulnerable if you caught them without their gear, and for his own neuroses.

Makes sense.

Weld managed to push the car that was pinning him from the side.  Holding the stack of vehicles up over his head, he found a point where he could set his foot without the scorched frame collapsing and kicked the car away.

Woo, go Weld!

As he tried to figure out how to manage the pile of flaming cars that sat atop him and his teammates, Mannequin struck.  Like a piston, Mannequin slammed into him, thrusting him away, then danced back into the cover of the flames and smoke.  Weld slid on the pavement until he collided with a car, and the cars that he’d been supporting collapsed.

And yeah, here Mannequin goes with his carefully and unpredictably timed attacks.

At least one fell so that Cache’s upper body speared through its undercarriage.  The top one tipped over and landed so it was propped up on a diagonal.

You know, normally, the idea that someone’s “upper body speared through [a car’s] undercarriage” is not a good thing. But here it means Cache avoided death by not having been unfrozen yet.

What could I do?  I didn’t have a long ranged weapon.  I didn’t trust my beetle’s ability to hold me and some heavy weight I could drop on Mannequin from above.

Not sure you can carry anything heavy enough to make much of a difference anyway. Maybe Bailey could, if he weren’t carrying you, but it’s a stretch.

Cache and Clockblocker wouldn’t be frozen forever.  It could be as short a time as thirty seconds.  If Cache or Clockblocker emerged from the effects of Clockblocker’s power, and there were two cars piled on top of them?  It would be grim.

Ahhh, yeah, that’s not ideal.

Clockblocker might be okay, freezing the bottom car the moment he’s free, but Cache might not be so lucky if he unfreezes before Clocky.

Worse, Cache was storing a number of the other heroes in his personal dimension.  What would happen to them if he died?

That’s a damn good question.

In some ‘verses I’d say the answer would be [EJECT]. But this is Worm. I’m inclined to think Cache a) acts as a gateway and they might be stuck in there until they die of thirst if he doesn’t survive to get them back out, or b) acts as a container and if he goes squish, so does the pocket dimension.

They had to have anticipated the possibility of Crawler interfering before they all recovered, but Mannequin?  I was surprised he was able to function in the midst of this blaze.

He probably took measures to be more resistant to explosions and fire after the gas encounter.

So when a piece of metal gets stuck to Weld, does it immediately become part of his body and thus likely to attack to any other metals it touches? That seems likely to me.

Weld pushed hard against the flaming hulk of the car, attempting to make room to free himself, but another car sailed through the air to land on top of Cache and Weld.

Shouldn’t the first car be stuck to his body anyway? And to his hands as well, now? At least if I understood Weld’s state of dress correctly.

Maybe the polish helps.

While Weld hacked at the cars, shearing through the undercarriage to make for pieces that were smaller to move, Mannequin began moving through the parking lot, pushing at more cars to get them closer to Weld and his teammates.  A minivan, a sedan, a pickup, pushed into Weld’s immediate surroundings.

He’s almost swimming in cars at this point… this must be what they call a carpool.

There was no swagger, no monologue, nothing from Mannequin but the methodical execution of his simple plan.  He approached the front of the pickup, tore off the hood and grabbed the engine block with all four arms.  Again, the billowing vapor and that explosive strength, as he brought it over his head and down on top of the second car he’d thrown, stacking them two high.

Hmm. This vapor… a byproduct of whatever he’s added that makes him so strong? Maybe something that can be used against him.

He crouched beneath the sedan and prepared to launch it as he had with the first two cars.

Poor Weld is going to come back to the Wards HQ struggling to carry like five cars that are stuck to his body.

It was Mannequin.  Of all of them, he was the hardest to make out as he moved close to the ground, slipping between cars and through the flames to disappear from Weld’s sight.

I realized at the end of the last post that she was looking at the fight using her eyes rather than her bugs, thus invalidating the stated half of my reasoning for why it’d be Mannequin (the other half being that he’d been remarkably unseen thus far), but I’m still going to call this a win.

Oh, and a third half I didn’t consider: Bonesaw and Jack can’t do shit to Weld directly (or at least, Jack would need a lot of range) with their specialties, and Weld wouldn’t be defending the time-stopped heroes in quite the same way against their attacks.

He had four arms, one set longer than the other, which combined with his jerky movements to give him an almost bug-like demeanor.

Quick, Taylor, control him! :p

I watched as he paused at the rear of one car, crouching with his two sets of arms at the bumper, then unfolded explosively, steam or vapor billowing around him as he launched the car through the air.

Mannequin and Lung have a thing in common: From a writing perspective, they’re both good for repeat encounters thanks to bodily changes.

Lung had several stages, allowing for very different fights depending on which stage he starts in (even as Lung has pretty thoroughly lost relevance, I’m still not entirely convinced we won’t see him fully draconic some day).

Meanwhile, Mannequin adapts, changing his body after each loss and adding new features that change the game next time.

These features make these two more interesting to read about when the same characters go up against them again.

It wasn’t much distance, only ten or so feet, but the car rolled and slammed into Weld, knocking the junior hero into his frozen teammates and pinning him there.

Weld, looking down at the car stuck to his chest: “Shit. This is gonna take a while to get rid of.”

So few bugs were alive down there.  Some had retreated beneath the pavement, or into the lowermost parts of nearby buildings, but the heat and the hot air was killing them.

I like the contrast between the situation before and after the bombs hit, regarding how many bugs are available. Before, she had way more bugs than usual, and now she has… pretty much just a handful or five.

Some died quickly, others slow.  I was careful about how close I got, devoting extra attention to ensuring that the beetle didn’t perish or find himself unable to fly as the heat damaged his wings.

Yeah, try not to go upside down Icarus on us.

Wait, would that involve “falling” up into the sea of the stars when the wings break?

Amy had made him durable, but there was a limit to how far I wanted to push my luck when there was two hundred feet of open air between me and the ground, and a sea of fire waiting for any scenario where I managed to survive the impact.

Yeah, that’s quite reasonable.

It was a bit of a task, to focus on flying -there was no autopilot like there was with my other bugs- and to track the remaining bugs on the ground.  The sewers and storm drains were hot, but hospitable.  Navigation would be difficult for Jack and Bonesaw underground.  Between Leviathan’s active destruction of the storm drains and the more passive deterioration as they got clogged with rubble and debris and flooded, there were few spaces underground where the villains would be able to navigate.

So if they went down there, they probably wouldn’t get out anywhere useful.

Had they died?  It was possible, and I was swiftly eliminating areas where there was both a population of bugs and space for the Nine to hide.

I don’t think any of them are dead, but if one of them is, it’s Mannequin or Bonesaw. More likely Mannequin out of those two, because he’s been fairly irrelevant ever since his second defeat by Taylor.

Also worth noting: We don’t know what fresh hell Bonesaw was up to this time with the civilians she “recruited”. I have a feeling we’ll find out somehow.