Grue opened a path in the darkness for the faux paramedic, we checked that she was alive, and then helped her limp to the ambulance, with me doing most of the heavy work for once.

Oh, good, Cricket didn’t make good on her attempted threat when Grue blocked her.

I hurried to grab some first aid supplies, packing ointments, pills and bandages into a bag.  Coil’s soldiers retreated back toward the police barricade before I was finished, each supporting the other.

Problem: The E88ers were going to attack that barricade. Hookwolf might still be in a condition to do so – are the police there capable of defending themselves against a solo Hookwolf?

Grue flooded more of the area with darkness while I gathered most of the swarm back around myself.  I left only the bare minimum of bugs necessary to navigate the sightless world of Grue’s power and the ones I needed to track Hookwolf’s presence.

Nice. Good to stay aware of where he is, in case he comes after you.

There were more I couldn’t touch because they were caught helpless in the endless, subsonic drone that Cricket still emanated, but I had enough that I could deal.

Eyy, infrasound confirmed!

I mean, besides the things I mentioned about known effects of infrasound on humans, it was a 50/50 shot, but still.

We hurried away before Hookwolf thought to attack the spot where the ambulance had crashed.

Time to skitter out of here!

An uglier wound marked his right arm from elbow to wrist, all the more visible because the cut had extended to the cuff of his costume, leaving the sleeve to hang loose around his elbow.

Ouch.

“Looks worse than it is.  I’ve fought people like her before, in sparring and fighting classes.  She was showing off with the first few cuts.  Shallow, inflicting pain, not really meant to disable or deal real harm.”

Huh… why, though. Just showing off, or not actually wanting to harm the enemies too much, á la Taylor?

“That’s stupid,” I muttered.  “I’m glad, but it’s stupid.”

Yeah, in an actual life and death fight, it really is.

“She probably didn’t think about it.  I’d bet it’s something she learned and incorporated into her style while fighting for a crowd.”

Oh right, the fighting ring. No fun for the audience if one of the fighters is dead in three seconds flat.

He looked over in Hookwolf’s direction, then winced at how the movement pulled against his injured chest.  “We should go.”

“Agreed.”

Yeah, if you can get away without fighting Hookwolf more than absolutely necessary, that would be good.

Grue caught her by the wrist mid-swing and pulled her off-balance before she could follow through.

Nice work!

She moved fluidly, considering the blade buried in her upper leg.  She reversed her grip on her weapon with her free hand, stuttered her power to create what I took was another radar pulse, then readied to swing it at Grue.

She’s good at going with the flow.

I twisted the knife, and pulled it out of her leg with a two-handed grip.  Or, to rephrase, I pulled the knife through her leg, dragging it horizontally through the meat of her thigh, toward her hip, and out.

Oooh, that’s gonna hurt.

She toppled, and Grue put his hand on my shoulder to pull me back away.  Cricket lay on the pavement, pressing her hands to her injury.

Enemy down, for now.

That leaves Hookwolf Kong.

Hm… not wasting an instant to retaliate kind of sounds like another instance of no reaction time.

I suppose that’s also potentially a natural result of bullet time perception. I’m leaning more and more towards the power that lets her dodge bullets being that.

When I was sure I could move without falling over, I lunged, knife in hand.

I’d hoped that if I was quick about it, I could act before she used her radar again.

Sonar.

I wasn’t so lucky.  She was already moving by the time I realized she’d made another pulse of noise, scythe points whipping around toward the side of my head, where my mask provided only partial coverage.

Damn.

I had too much forward momentum to avoid walking straight into the incoming blades.

I half-fell, half ducked, and instead of driving my knife into her back like I’d intended, I wound up burying it in the side of her thigh.  Whatever technique let her dodge bullets, it apparently didn’t work if she couldn’t see.

Hey, sweet maneuver!

As much as it might have hurt, she didn’t waste an instant in hefting her weapon to retaliate and swinging down at my head.  I wasn’t in a position to get out of the way.

Ah, shit.

I doubled over and crumpled to the ground.

Grue shouted something, but his words didn’t reach me through the darkness.

Probably “SKITTER!”

So yeah, with what this chapter has shown about how sound works with the darkness (namely that it’s heavily muffled, but not completely blocked, which makes a lot of sense if you consider the darkness to be similar to a dense gas), Wildbow is off the hook for the whole gallery Armsmaster thing. At least mostly so.

Cricket emitted another radar pulse, then lunged for Grue.

I don’t blame Taylor for not being intricately aware of the difference, or for not caring at the moment, but it still bugs me a little every time she calls it a radar.

She caught him in the arm, this time.  Then she backed off, going for the continuous, sense-warping noise to put my bugs on the fritz once more.

It’s the Undersiders’ turn to attack.

I was three paces from Cricket when I felt the sound die off, then resume again for one brief second.  Another radar pulse.

“Careful!” I shouted, adjusting my momentum and hurrying to back away.  Too slow.  She was already pivoting to swing at me.

Uh oh.

The handle of one scythe struck me in the side of my throat, the actual blade hooking around behind my neck to halt my retreat.

Uh oh.

Before I could do anything, she pulled me toward her.  I stumbled forward, and she adjusted her grip to swing the other scythe up and into the side of my stomach.

Um. Hi there.

Annoying as it was that everyone seemed to have a way of dealing with my bugs, I was at least putting her in a position where she couldn’t both find us and deal with them.

Yeah, that’s fortunate.

I was having trouble getting a sense of her powers.  I’d heard of her, seen pictures, read up on her on the wiki and message boards.  She was rarely more than a footnote, typically a suspect in a murder or arson case alongside Stormtiger and Hookwolf.  Never had I come across something like ‘Cricket has limited precognition’ or ‘Cricket is a sound manipulator’.

So far it’s seemed like a mix of echolocation and either “no reaction time”, “bullet time perception” or “limited precognition”…

Hm. The echolocation could be seen as an extension of bullet time perception, I suppose, since it’d give her brain more perceived time to actually process the echos.

The bugs started to fall away from her, losing their grip or ability to navigate through the air.  Knowing our advantage would soon disappear, I advanced towards her, drawing my knife.

Better make use of the time you know where she is and not vice versa.

I checked on Hookwolf, and found him scaling a building a distance behind me.  Was he trying to rise above the cloud of darkness to spot us or get his bearings?

Hm, good luck with that, I guess. Grue, you might want to send some darkness up the side of that building.