“Trying to assess the resources we have at our disposal.”
Yeah, it’s good to know.
I heard a car door slam outside. That would be either Grue or a collection of the others.
Hi!
Genesis used her hands to shift her position in her seat. I glanced at her legs. They were thin. Atrophy. She’d been in a wheelchair for a while. When I looked up, I saw she’d caught me looking.
She’s skipped leg day for a while.
“If you have a question, I’d rather you ask than keep wondering.”
“And special abilities? You can give them to your forms?”
“I have to visualize the mechanism, the organs or whatever that make it work. I only have a limited time before I’m knocked out, so time I spend on that is time I’m not working on other stuff. Like the form I was just using, you didn’t see it, but-”
Ahh, that makes sense.
Maybe she didn’t have time to give the bunny slug (…bug? does that portmanteau mean Taylor could’ve controlled her?) legs?
“I saw it.”
“Right. The bugs, right. Well, I visualized the water suction system and the water gun, but because I didn’t focus on the body, it didn’t have arms or legs, and it was slow, and because it didn’t have vital organs, it drained me.”
So when they don’t have vital organs, what does it take to “kill” them?
“Okay.” I held up my costume with the legs and feet reduced to tatters. I turned my attention to a box behind my chair, tucked beneath a shelf of terrariums. A small tide of roaches lifted it and carted it to me.
Wait, wait, wait.
Has she been making a backup costume in the background all along?
Of fucking course she would do that, she’s Taylor. She’d see this eventuality coming a mile away! How did I not see that coming?
If that’s indeed what’s in the box, of course.
Inside were the scraps of fabric and mask left behind after Mannequin’s first retreat. I hadn’t wanted to spare any material.
Ahh. It’s not a backup costume, but it is stuff she can use to fix her main one.
I just realized there’s probably a connection between how posh Shatterbird acts and talks and the strength and versatility of her power. She’s probably been brought up super rich, so it only makes sense that she could afford such a good power from Cauldron.
“What about materials? What can you use to put a body together?”
“I… don’t know. I can control it, sorta, but my power chooses for me. I visualize it as I use my power, I drift off, and I go into that sort of twilight state when you’re just barely almost asleep, and your mind wanders.
That is such a fitting state to be involved in this power.
Anything I haven’t firmly put together in my head gets filled in with the stray thoughts and imagination. I never put too much effort into the material, unless I wanted something like armor or stone skin.”
So in other words, the power chooses it simply because she hasn’t particularly bothered to in most cases.
So ridiculously powerful. If I had her power… damn it.
Yeah, sheesh. She could give Shatterbird a good run for her money in terms of both raw power and especially versatility.
“So you want to be aggressive instead? Suffer a fast death?”
“Yes to the first part, no to the second. Look, they’re good because they’re experienced. Jack has been doing this for years. He knows the exact balance he needs to strike, to be unpredictable enough that we can’t plan against them, but clever enough that we can’t catch them off guard.”
So… how exactly are you planning to catch them off guard with this?
“But you want to try. To catch them off guard, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
And your argument for why you should is because that’s difficult?
Well, I suppose that’s the same argument that was made for going to the moon, and that was a big success. Sign me up!
“It’s suicide. Like, what are the odds you’re going to make it through a third round? If we have a fifty-fifty chance of dying in a given confrontation, that’s, what, a one in eight chance?”
If you assume three confrontations, yes.
“You’re better at math than I am. Sure. Except we’re not going to fight them head on. Tell me, what are the limits on your abilities?”
“There really aren’t any. If it makes sense, if it’s self-sustaining, with organs and an energy supply, it’s easier on me. I don’t need to take up as much of the load with personal effort. Bigger and denser forms are more taxing, too.”
Interesting. So she can do things that make no sense, but it’s more tiring. And she can make the forms gargantuan, but again, more tiring.
She’s got an insanely strong power, it’s just a matter of being able to use it without tiring herself out immediately.
“Of attack. It’s easier if we wait until everyone’s arrived before I get into it, so I’m not repeating it too many times. Might even be smarter, if Cherish is looking in and trying to read my emotions to figure out what we’re doing.”
Let’s make a plan of attack! Start looking forward and stop looking back!
I do think Cherish might get involved, but not in that exact way.
“Attack?”
“Being careful and being on the defensive isn’t getting us anywhere.”
The best defense is a good offense, they say.
“It’s keeping us alive.”
Barely.
It’s a really risky idea, and I’m not sure if it’s a good one, but it may be worth a shot if they can think of a good execution.
I shook out my costume and examined it. Progress was too slow. I put down the wire cutters and got the plastic lighter from my utility compartment. I proceeded to burn through the material on the inside of the leggings, from the cut I’d made all the way to the crotch, then back down the other side, putting out any flame that lingered.
Careful. You’re not immune to fire to the nether regions.
I was nearly done when I finally responded, “I don’t think it is. We’re still dying. It’s just… slower. Can you honestly tell me we’re going to survive another two confrontations like this?”
And they have quite a lot of such confrontations ahead of them if the game keeps going.
Genesis was the first one to arrive upstairs, carried by one of her remotely controlled images, a crude rendering of a man who draped her in a chair and then faded as she woke.
Hmm.
The way her creations look cartoonish, the way some of them are “crude renderings”, does she essentially “draw” the creations in her mind (which is then translated into reality) when she makes them? Does the visual complexity affect how long it takes to form them?
“I couldn’t put out any of the major fires,” she said. For someone who had just spent four fifths of the day sleeping, she looked exhausted.
Her power is probably quite energy-draining, and I doubt the coma her regular body is put into actually gets her any real rest.
“Thank you for trying.” I took the wire cutters to the inside of my burned costume’s leggings. Each squeeze got me only half an inch of cut material.
This might take some time.
“What next?”
“I’ve outlined a basic plan with Grue. He contacted the others. They should be arriving shortly, and we’ll all discuss it together. Tattletale doesn’t think Burnscar’s going to come back anytime soon, but I’ve laid out spider-silk tripwires over the area, just in case.”
Oh, nice, I’d be down for catching up with the southern Undertravelers, hear what they’ve had to deal with. And some planning, though who knows if we’ll actually get to see that part. It might be better if we don’t, given the Unspoken Plan Guarantee.
Maybe it’s going to get interrupted by Imp showing up with news of whatever deal Cherish wanted to make. Hell, maybe even with Cherish herself in tow, though I can’t imagine anyone would appreciate that even after learning Cherish is willing to strike a deal. I don’t think Imp is as stupid as that would imply, either – it would be a super effective trap if Cherish was lying. “Hey Imp, help me walk right into a gathering of all your friends so I can kill them before we even enter the room.”
The disinfectant virtually hissed as it touched my burns. I applied it liberally, then got out the gauze and antibiotic cream.
It hurt as much as the lingering effects of Bakuda’s pain grenade, but there was also the knowledge that it would take forever to heal.
At least unless you get Panacea to reconsider and join you.
I wouldn’t be able to wear skin-tight leggings over the injured area.
I suppose that’s a bit of a problem.
Bastards. This pain was nothing compared to what they’d subjected my people to. How many people had lost parents, loved ones, friends? Homes? I couldn’t even complain to myself about the burn without feeling guilty.
It’s not misery olympics.
You’re allowed to feel pain even if there are others who are feeling more pain, and you are not responsible for their pain. You suffered your pain while doing your best to prevent that. That’s nothing to feel guilty about.
Removing my mask wasn’t a problem, but unstrapping my armor and getting my arms out of the sleeves made my ribs ache. A fresh bruise had layered on top of the old one, black and purple over a purple-green.
Hey, it’s a Tattletale bruise!
On top of a Toilet Paper Roll bruise.
I had to pause for a minute to catch my breath before I began on the legs.
Yeah, better catch those legs too before they run away from you!
(I’m not a dad yet, but if I become one some day, you know I’m prepared with the dad jokes.)
I’d been wearing waterproof tights under my costume, and I cringed to think of the fact that I’d been wading in filthy water with the injuries exposed.
Eesh, that’s not good.
I got the first aid kit I’d brought down from my room and found a pair of tweezers. Tatters of melted plastic from the leggings clung to the creases and edges of the burn. Slowly, carefully, I worked my way down, removing the black fragments, digging in where necessary. Every area I cleaned, I disinfected. The largest burn covered my right heel, the top of my foot, and half of my calf, but the toes were okay.
The other marked the left ankle, heel and a patch small enough to cover with my hand on the shin. There was less damage, but there was more melted spandex crusting it. If I had second degree burns, it would be there.
Not gonna lie, there’s not much to comment on during these sections.
I do think I understand why they happen on-screen, though. Showing the nitty gritty of dealing with the injuries sustained in cape battles helps support the deromanticization of the cape life that’s a strong throughline of Worm.
I… don’t actually think I’ve talked broadly about that theme before. It’s just so thoroughly a thing that it has just felt like it went without saying.
I headed upstairs and stripped my mannequin of the costume I’d largely completed. Then I removed my rain boots and began the torturous process of peeling out of the costume I was wearing.
Oh yeah, what did you end up doing with that? Did you put on the one you were making for Tattletale?
I’d put off investigating the damage in favor of finding Bitch sooner.
Ah. I guess it wasn’t as damaged as I was picturing.
Also, whoops, I just reread the first sentence of this paragraph and realized that no, of course she didn’t put on the one she was making for Tattletale, she just said that had been on the mannequin.
Not to be confused with being worn by Mannequin, though that’s an amusing mental image.
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