A flash of light marked another uncontrolled use of the new cape’s power.  It struck close to the ground, removing the leg of someone who lay unconscious or dead on the ground, but it left the ground perfectly intact.  Why?  When it consumed clothing and flesh but not the building itself?

That is very interesting. Maybe it only works on organic material? Though that doesn’t cover all clothes. That would also invalidate my explanation for the “pull” after the flash.

Or maybe it’s just specifically for the use of erasing people and their clothes? Powers can be weirdly specific sometimes.

“Boy,” Skidmark pointed, “Approach the stage!”

To be fair, Skidmark didn’t say the winners had to use the super juice themselves. It seems like a reasonable compromise to allow the boy’s prize to go to someone else of the boy’s own choosing.

But that might not be how Skidmark intends to do this.

The ring flashed and disappeared.  The boy turned, as though in a daze.  He flinched as another burst of light sparked a good ten feet away.

Yeeah, better get control of that sooner rather than later.

He limped toward Skidmark and stared up at the Merchant’s leader.

“You’re gonna need a name, kid, if you’re going to join the Merchant’s upper circle.”

Hmm… Voidlight?

The boy blinked, looking around, as if he didn’t quite understand.  Was he in shock?

Would make a lot of sense.

“Come on, now.  Let’s hurry it up.”

There was a spark of the boy’s power, and the flash removed a beachball-sized section of rubble beneath Skidmark’s ‘stage’.  The boy stared at it.

Wait, now it’s removing part of the building?

Also, imagine if he accidentally removed Skidmark. That would probably not end well for the boy.

“E-Eraser?” he answered, making it a question.

Fair. Not super inventive, but he was put on the spot.

“If we wait any longer, there’s only going to be one of you cockbiters left in the ring!  We got five of you fuckers left, and that’s all we need!”

We’ve got some winners! Time to see super juice in action, perhaps.

Only five?  There had been at least eighty in the ring at the beginning, and still more had joined the fight afterward, one way or another.

Ah! I guess Taylor just didn’t make note of that, with the obvious exception of Bryce.

I’m sure the rampaging new parahuman had something to do with the numbers dropping so much more quickly now.

I could see the remaining five as the audience moved back to give them space.  A family of three, it seemed, a woman with a gaping wound in her stomach, her hand crimson where it pressed against the injury, and the boy who’d had his trigger event.

Why is the boy who had his trigger event counted for the purposes of finding five people to give superpowers to? Can the juice give him more powers?

Other than that we’ve got a family – nice work making it through this together – and Kanaya. I hope the stomach-wounded woman gets vampire powers.

I didn’t see Bryce or his new ‘family’ in the mist of the people retreating from the scene.

Welp. Time to search, I guess.

Let’s hope you find more than just his legs.

It took a full minute for everyone to break off in the fighting and back off to a point where they didn’t feel immediately threatened.

So is this just halftime, or did the still-fighting population of the arena reach five, or…

So many injured.  How many of his own people had Skidmark just lost in this stunt?

Probably a lot, both injured and dead. We’ve seen some of the deaths happen, after the trigger event, and the narration, rules and people involved make it seem like there’s been more.

But hey. A single parahuman can be worth a lot of mundanes in some people’s eyes.

(I’m still 98% certain there are parahuman supremacist terror organizations out there whose primary goal is to cause as many trigger events as possible for the public. Doesn’t matter whether they show up in the story or not, I’m just pretty sure they’d exist in the setting.)

Did he care?  He stood to gain five new parahumans for his group.  Six if you counted the guy who’d had his trigger event.

To be fair, he could’ve gained the other five without this mess, but as I described last chapter, this whole thing is a pretty solid way to find the most useful people to give the super juice to. (With the exception that it doesn’t account for loyalty.)

I don’t think there’s much left of the chapter, but Skidmark told me to stop so– no, I’m kidding, let’s move on. 😛

The last group to tackle us had largely been beaten back.  Another group made some threatening moves, but they seemed to be in rougher shape than us.  Their leader was an amazon of a woman with a wild look in her eyes and matted hair, and I could see concern flash across her face as she looked us over and noted the disparity in the condition of our groups.

Yeeah, don’t even bother.

It struck me she was in a bad spot, knowing her group would be thrashed if she took us on, but at the same time, she couldn’t order her guys to back off without looking like a coward.

Hm. Tricky situation for both sides. I’m not sure how to solve this – backing off might give the amazon’s guys confidence and spur them on, but intimidation might also spur them on by virtue of them having the same “I’m not a coward” attitude as the amazon. Holding their place doesn’t solve anything either.

…move sideways?

Whatever decision she would have made, we didn’t get to find out.

Oh? Did the guy with the bursts of non-existence come too close, or something? I doubt it’s another trigger event, given that that would presumably cause another round in the tesseractid zone.

“Stop!” Skidmark hollered into his microphone.

Hm. Alright, sure.

I slapped her lightly across the face, “Lisa!  Need you to come back to reality, not go further into your delirium.”

I wonder if she would be able to continue filling in the blanks later, or if the imping would start preventing that.

The slap seemed to do it.  She shook her head, like a dog trying to shake off water.  “Taylor?”

“Oh hey, Taylor, you’re here.”

“Come on,” I helped her to her feet.  She almost lost her balance, but she was still recuperating faster than I had.

I’m sure her power is helping with that too, now that it’s directed towards the world she inhabits.

I wonder how long she’ll retain the knowledge she just obtained after she stops focusing on it.

Charlotte took over the job of ensuring Lisa was okay, and I moved forward to help back up the other guys.  With a knife in each hand, I stood behind the trio of Brooks, Senegal and Minor, ready to stop anyone who tried to slip by.

I kept my eyes closed.

Badass.

I could manage so long as I didn’t try to move and keep my eyes open at the same time.  It was swiftly receding.

That’s good.

I hurried to her side, while Brooks turned to rejoin the fight and help re-establish our front lines.

“Lisa!” I shook her.  She looked at me, her eyes unfocused.

Come back to this world, Lisa!

“They’re like viruses,” she said.  Her voice was thin, as if she were talking to herself.  “And babies.  And gods.  All at the same time.”

She did it.

She actually fucking did it.

“Viruses”, huh… that would be in line with the idea that parahumans are the result of absorbing a “seed” of a tesseractid. And implies that they might be using the parahumans to create more of themselves.

“Babies” implies a sense of immaturity. They don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t fully understand their impact.

“Gods” is… pretty self-explanatory in this case. Anyone could look at these beings and say “that’s some god-level shit right there”.

And Charlotte, who was helping me stay balanced on my feet, was staring at me wide-eyed.  I remembered her exclamation of surprise.

Yeah, what was up with that? Did she realize what Taylor’s instability means, by comparison with Skidmark & co.?

“Oh my god. You’re [a parahuman]?”

Or, “You’re [like them]?”

If everyone on stage with powers had been affected, and Lisa and I were reacting the same way, it couldn’t be that hard for her to put the pieces together.  Charlotte knew.

Seems like it. She might not know which parahumans you are, but she seems to have figured out you are among them. And if she knows anything about trigger events, or figured that too out from what just happened, she might also have figured out since when.

I looked to Lisa, for advice or ideas, but she was still slumped over, and she wasn’t recovering.  Why?  If this was some kind of psychic backlash from someone else having their trigger event, had she maybe been hit harder because of her power?

Yeah, that’s what I was about to suggest too.

Hell, if she used her power on the tesseractids, that’s definitely bound to have caused a psychic overload.

I wonder how much of that she would remember. We do know it’s possible to remember under certain circumstances, and I think it’s implied that the reason the other person we know of who remembers did so is because her power is a separated part of her psyche. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Lisa’s power lent itself to remembering in a similar way, especially if she used it in the timeless moment. Then again, psychic overload might cause it to go the other way, too.

The boy screamed in some combination of horror, pain and rage, and flashes of the whiteness erupted randomly around him.

Ah, shit, here comes the “out of control” part.

Some caught people who were lying prone on the ground, others hit standing combatants, while most simply hit thin air.

The chances of Sierra not being happy at the end of this all just keep on rising.

A trigger event.  I’d just seen someone have their trigger event.

So you did, and it was a lot more interesting than I had expected.

But what had happened to Skidmark’s group, Tattletale and I?  I could vaguely remember something, thought about trying to put it into words, as if describing it could help call it to mind in a way that I could describe it, but they disappeared as I reached for them.

Judging by Skidmark’s reaction, it really does seem like this is a common occurrence when parahumans are close enough to other parahumans during their trigger event. He seemed to have experienced the same thing Taylor did and he knew what it meant. But none of them remember what they actually experienced, just the aftereffects.

I was reminded of Imp’s power.  Before I could get a handle on it, I’d forgotten entirely, and I was struggling to even remember what I was trying to do, my thoughts muddling the idea of it with my attempts to get my bearings.

Who’s Imp again?

But yes, it’s very reminiscent of that. It’s like the tesseractids are suppressing all memory of themselves in humans, whether that’s intentional or not.