Alright, timeout, let’s talk about Imp for a second.

This all recontextualizes Taylor’s comment about meeting Imp three days ago – they didn’t recruit Imp three days ago, they had already done that and rerecruited Taylor three days ago.

Also, if Imp really is Aisha, then that adds a layer of identity disassociation to the comment, in that Taylor actually met her a while back but was specifically talking about meeting her cape identity.

Another implication of the two being the same person is that Imp had her trigger event recently, likely during the Endbringer attack. This fits with the attack also triggering other people and thus giving them multiple powers (as it’s been indicated Imp has). Given that Aisha knew about Grue and the Undersiders, she probably went straight to him when she discovered her power, explaining how she got in touch with the Undersiders and why Grue is okay with her being here along with the team.

Bitch delivered a swift kick to my shoulder, making me grunt and fall flat onto my back.  “Deserved that too.”

Fair enough.

“Point made,” Lisa told her. “Stop.”

“Fuck you,” Bitch snarled.  She pointed at Brian.  “It’s irritating enough that he wants to start giving orders and calling himself our leader, I’m not putting up with it from you, too.  I do what I want, and what I want is to beat her face in.”

I suggest you don’t tell Rachel whose idea it was for Brian to make himself official leader.

Bitch turned, strode to the pile of furniture, and then lifted one of the loose shelves that had been removed from the bookcase.  It was  a piece of wood chipboard about three feet long and a foot deep.  Lisa moved to put herself between Bitch and me and stave off Bitch’s attack.  She turned to Brian, “Hey, a little help, here?”

Yeah, no, Brian has just as much reason to be upset with Taylor as Rachel does. Maybe even more so, what with the romantic shenanigans between them during what as far as Brian knows was Taylor’s plot to betray them all. He rejected her, but her trying at all might make him feel even more that she abused his trust.

Brian frowned, “Why did you bring her here?”

“To talk,” Lisa said.  When Bitch tried to move around to her left, Lisa shifted her position to stay in her way.  I sat up, used my legs and hands to put some distance between Bitch and I.

I wonder if what helped / is about to help Brian agree to take Taylor back in might’ve been / might be about to be (coddamn flashback tenses…) her telling him that she had decided not to betray them by the time of Buzz.

If that was true, I was really glad I hadn’t tensed up.  She was sturdily built and she didn’t hold back in the slightest.  She kicked down the dog gate, and an instant later, her fist connected with my cheekbone to send me sprawling to the ground, my tailbone absorbing most of the impact.

Welp, here we go.

I’d been knocked around by Lung, Glory Girl, Bakuda and even Leviathan.  Some of those guys hit magnitudes harder than Bitch did, but it still hurt like hell.

Yeeah, a hard punch is a hard punch, even if some people punch even harder.

It spoke volumes that while Lisa stepped forward so she could defend me, Grue and Alec didn’t.

About what I had expected, yeah.

The dogs tentatively passed through the open gate, but hung back in deference to their master.

“I-” I broke off mid-sentence – opening my mouth to speak had caused the pain in the right side of my face to come to bear, full force.  “I deserved that.”

Probably the best she can say right now. Good Taylor.

His little sister?  Here?

…ah yeah, I forgot to comment on that.

Shit, she doesn’t happen to be Imp?

Either, it seems Brian has found out about Aisha’s awareness of his powered antics.

Alec was sitting cross-legged on a pile of furniture, a bowl of colorful cereal balanced on one knee.  A long cut ran from just beneath his ear to his shoulder, beneath his shirt.  He was watching a TV that was plugged into an extension cord that hung from the ceiling.

Howdy.

He’d turned my way at the barking of the dogs, and I almost missed him uttering the words, “You gotta be kidding.”

Honestly, this is an entirely fair response. Even if he didn’t have reason to be pissed at Taylor and surprised to see Lisa bringing her back to their place, everything about the way she left the hospital and didn’t come back to them over the next few weeks would’ve suggested to him that it was unlikely she’d never come back, yet here she is.

One of the dogs apparently recognized me, because it stopped at the gate and wagged its tail.  A part of me took that as a good sign.  Then Bitch appeared, immediately wheeling on me, water flying from her damp hair.

Ah, uh, hi there.

Let’s not have round two of 2.8, alright?

She’d probably just come from the shower – she wore loose fitting army pants and a black tank top that had darker spots where beads of water had soaked into it.  A towel hung around her shoulders.  As she saw me, emotion hardened the lines of her face.  Her hands clenched as she strode toward me.  I saw the aggression in her body language, squeezed my eyes shut and tried to relax.  I remembered what Brian had said during our sparring, about how tensing up would only make you more vulnerable.

Taylor is entirely prepared for the fact that Rachel might attack her right now.

I’m not sure the others would be quite as inclined to help stop her this time.

The place hadn’t yet been organized.  A pair of beds sat in one corner, surrounded by assorted pieces of furniture.  The building’s interior was dry, crisp, and brightly lit.  It might have appeared sterile, if not for the spray paint on much of the sheet metal, and the tracks of dried mud on the ground near the door.

True sterility is hard to come across these days, isn’t it, in most parts of the city?

Our arrival was met by the furious barking of a half-dozen dogs.  A set of gates ringing the front door stopped them from attacking us.  

Hm. We might not be visiting Imp here.

Brian was sitting on the far end of the room, beside Aisha.  He wore his regular sparring uniform, and Aisha wore much the same thing, though she was wearing shorts instead of yoga pants.

Hiya. I take it Rachel’s around too, and probably Alec. I guess we’re about to see Taylor trying (successfully, somehow) to get the remaining Undersiders on her side. This ought to be interesting.

I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit sleepy today. Efforts to become diurnal again are going well, but my body hasn’t quite caught up yet.

Still, though, I don’t want to postpone today’s liveblog session (in part because something I thought might force me to postpone to tomorrow ended up getting postponed to tomorrow itself), so I’m going to try to give you a proper quality liveblog. Hell, maybe it’ll help me be less sleepy. But yeah, if my sleepiness does become too much of an issue, I’ll just have to split the chapter.