Manpower and Brandish charged.  They didn’t get two steps before Marquis turned himself into a sea urchin, bone spears no thicker than a needle extending out of every pore, some extending twelve or fifteen feet.

Pfft. Well, that’s certainly a tactic.

Brandish planted her heel on the ground to arrest her forward movement and activated her power.  In an instant, her body was condensed into a point, surrounded by a layered, spherical force field.  It meant she didn’t fall on her rear end, and she could pick a more appropriate posture as she snapped back into her human shape.

That’s a nice little trick with her morph ball power.

Manpower wasn’t so adroit.  He managed to stop himself, slamming one foot through the mahogany floor to give himself something to brace against, but it was too late to keep him from running into the spears of bone.

Ow.

Shards snapped against his skin and went flying.

Better than them going in, at least.

Lady Photon opened her mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late.  Flashbang fell to one knee as a shard bounced off the ground near him, reshaping into a form that could slash across the top of his foot.

Ah, fuck, he doesn’t need to be connected to the pieces to control them, they just need to be his.

Brandish caught only a glimpse of the wound, primarily blood.  She didn’t see anything resembling bone, but Marquis apparently did.

Wait, can he control other people’s bones if he has line of sight?

There was a sound like firecrackers going off, and Flashbang screamed.

Yikes. How many bones just broke in there?

The needles retracted.  Marquis rolled his shoulders, as if loosening his muscles.  “Broke your foot?  How clumsy.”

Related to the way I feel about arrogance in fiction, I also have a love/hate relationship with characters who talk like this.

He’s toeing the line.

“Stand down,” Brandish ordered.

“Now why would I want to do that?”

So, who do we have here? Sounds like a prick.

It sounds like something Coil or Jack would say, but there are plenty others who might. Maybe Kaiser.

Marquis asked.

Oh! Ohhh. That makes sense, given who we just talked about.

Niiice. I’m down for this.

“I’ve won every time your team has challenged me, this situation isn’t so different.”

Are you sure? Because I have a major suspicion that this is the all-female challenge that got you arrested.

“You have nowhere to run.  We’ve got you where you live,” Manpower spoke.

Uh.

So we’ve got “in his house” checked off, but not “all female”, unless Manpower has been hiding something from us. Did someone lie here? Except wasn’t it Dragon’s narration that told us about Marquis’ arrest?

“I have plenty of places to run,” Marquis replied, shrugging.  “It’s just a house, I won’t lose any sleep over leaving it behind.  It’s an expensive house, I’ll admit, but that little detail loses much of its meaning when you’re as ridiculously wealthy as I am.”

Hehe.

I do like Marquis, even if he is a bit of a prick.

The Brockton Bay Brigade closed in on the man who stood by his leather armchair, wearing a black silk bathrobe.  He held his ground.

Oh hey, I forgot about the old name.

“If you’ll allow me to finish my wine-” he started, bending down to reach for the wine glass that sat beside the armchair.

I have a strange relationship with arrogance in fiction. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. This is the former case.

That said, there may very well be a gun hidden somewhere near that wine glass.

“I’m not so optimistic,” Carol commented.  She sighed again.  “I would have liked to be part of that negotiation.”

“We didn’t know where you were.  But let’s not fight again.  The important thing is that Tattletale pointed us in the right direction.  We think we know where your daughters are.”

Fantastic. Thanks, Lisa! 🙂

Daughters?  Plural?

Carol couldn’t put a name to the feeling that had just sucker-punched her.

If you’re conflicted because you only want Victoria back, so help me cod…

“Give me thirty seconds to change,” she said, standing from her chair.

■

Time to move out! And… back to the past again? Or are we just skipping ahead to her going out to find her daughters?

Probably the former.

■

Meanwhile, in the present, what’s going on there?

There was a knock on the door.  She looked up.

It was Lady Photon.  Sarah.

Hiya, Photon Mom. Hopefully you’re feeling better in this time. 🙂

“What are you doing here?  I’ve been looking all over.”

Where’s “here”? Still the office?

“I needed a few minutes to myself to think.  Get grounded.”

Sounds like it. Maybe.

Lady Photon gave her a sympathetic look.  She hated that look.

“Why did you want me?”

“We found Tattletale.  In a fashion.  We made contact with her and struck a deal.”

Oooh.

Is Tattletale planning to help them find Amy and Victoria?

Carol didn’t like the sound of that, but she wouldn’t say that out loud.  It would bother her sister, start something.  “What was she asking and what was she offering?”

“She wanted a two-week ceasefire.  The Undersiders won’t give any heroes or civilians any trouble, and we ignore them in exchange.”

Oh, that’s interesting. Sounds like a good idea for the Undersiders, so they can conduct their sneaky business against Coil without heroic interference.

“That gives them time to consolidate, get a firmer hold on the city.”

“Maybe.  I talked to Miss Militia about it, and she doesn’t think they’ll accomplish anything meaningful in that span of time.  The Undersiders have their hands full with white supremacists and some leftover Merchants, the Protectorate and Wards aren’t part of the ceasefire and they’ll be putting pressure on the Undersiders as well.”

So it’s specifically with New Wave, then. Makes sense, I suppose, given that Carol has been looking for them.

When she was done, the weapon disappeared.  Sarah hugged her, and she hugged her sister back.

Aww. They’ve just been through hell together and came out the other side with light in their hands.

But yeah, you should probably try to get out of whatever hellhole this is ASAP.

When she cried, it wasn’t the crying of a thirteen year old girl.  It was more basic, more raw: the uncontrolled, unrestrained wail one might expect of a baby.

Poor thing. 😦

When she struck him in the leg, the weapon sheared through without resistance.  That’s good, her thoughts were strangely disconnected from everything else, because I can’t hit very hard right now.

Woah. Did she just cut off his leg with a magic baseball bat?

Also I didn’t want to reference the Wheel of Time a second time in the previous post, but I can’t just ignore it anymore: Carol’s state of mind here is very reminiscent of the Void, a state of mind that puts emotions to the side, making them barely noticeable. In the Wheel of Time, it’s a crucial step to access magic, and also really good for archery and swordfighting.

He screamed as he fell to the ground, his leg severed.

She hit him again, then again, much like Sarah had with the other man.  Except this wasn’t simply beating him to a pulp.  It was more final than that.

Yeah, that “bat” seems to be a lot like Armsmaster’s nanobot blade, just going straight through whatever she hits but still doing a ton of damage. I suppose that’s because it’s made of “light and energy and electricity”, rather than something more… material.

In other words it acts a lot more like a really sharp sword. A lightsaber, even.

Though I suppose the downside would be an inability to parry incoming melee attacks. Not that melee attacks are a good idea. She may not be able to stop your weapon’s overall movement, but it could still get cut in half where she tries. As could your wrist.

Others were hatching from the same egg, spreading out like sparks from the shell of a firework.

Are you sure they’re others, and not just other parts of the same one?

Each unfolding into something vast and incomprehensible within seconds of its birth.

But her attention was on the first.  She felt it reach out and connect with another that shared a similar trajectory.  Still more were doing the same, pairing off.  Forming into trios, in some cases, but most chose to form pairs.

Interesting. This reminds me of the meeting we saw in Infestation. Which I suppose may have been some sort of mating dance, but this seems to indicate that the dance partners are siblings, in whatever way and to whatever extent that term may or may not apply to these beings. Maybe that doesn’t matter to their kind. Or maybe there’s just one egg per generation and multiple separate gene matchups.

But that assumes way more than I actually know about their reproduction and biology. Genes, for one thing, and the notion that they reproduce sexually. Hell, we’ve been calling them Dandelions because of how they look when they die, but what if that applies here too? What if the egg is somehow a part of one Dandelion’s life cycle – i.e. the egg is, in a sense, a Dandelion in itself, or at least made by only one – and the baby Dandelions are like the seeds blowing from a dandelion… am I making any sense at this point?

In any case, my point is, I have no guarantee that this works anything like we humans are prone to assuming.

A mate?  A partner?

Each settled into a position around the ruined egg, embracing their chosen companions, rubbing against, into and through one another as they continued to grow.

Wait, was I onto something when it came to it being a mass-egg of multiple matchups? Are they fixing up the egg and refertilizing it?

Ooh, or maybe the dandelion metaphor was on point and the seeds just haven’t let go of the plant’s core yet?

The egg vibrated. Or did it?  No, it was an illusion.  There were multiple copies of the egg, multiple versions, and they each stirred, deviating from one another until subtle double images appeared.

Multiple eggs from multiple realities?

Then, one by one, they crumpled into a single point.  The egg at the center of the formation of these creatures was the last, and for the briefest of moments, it roiled with the pressure and energy of all of the others.

Then it detonated, and the creatures came alive, soaring out into the vastness of the void, trails of dust following in their wake, each with a partner, a companion, traveling in a different direction.

Holy shit I think I was right.

Hmm. Maybe the ultimate apocalyptic threat also exists across realities, and that’s why its arrival is a certainty in all timelines? Except then why would Jack Slash make a difference to when it arrives?

A crack split the ground.  Once the dust had settled, nothing happened for a long time.

More cracks.

Are the Dandelions coming up this time?

Not literally but kind of literally?

It’s an egg, she realized, just in time to see it hatch.

So this flat plain is… a surface of an enormous, probably 4+ dimensional egg? We saw the apparent death of a Dandelion with Karahindiba, are we now seeing one’s birth?

Hey, does the sky look different in any way?

The egg’s occupant tore free from the crack, unfolding from a condensed point to grow larger with every moment and movement.

That sounds like a Dandelion, alright.

How adorable are they as babies?

Are they babies? Or do they just come out fully grown? Can you even tell when you can’t see one or more of their dimensions and they seem to exist across realities?