One of these days, I was going to run up against something strange and assume it was her, only to be unpleasantly surprised.

To be fair, that is a possibility.

I drew words and symbols with the bugs.  Shortly after, the flow of the water stopped and the consistency of her body began to break down.

Time to wakey wakey!

She was on her way back.

Charlotte had taken the kids away, so my lair was empty as we made our way inside.

It’s like Burnscar, empty inside.

…

Oh my cod, is there an ironic stealth joke in play with Burnscar? Has she lost her spark?

Bitch assessed the area and then headed into the bathroom, going for the first aid kit.

How are first aid stocks in Brockton Bay doing these days? I mean, first there’s Leviathan’s damage to the city, then there’s the Shattering, and then there’s the other damage the Nine is causing…

My bugs found Genesis a few blocks away.  Or, rather, they found something that approximated a blend between a slug and a rabbit.

That sounds…

That sounds adorable. At least the way I’m imagining it, with a rabbit’s head and fur on the body shape of a slug. The other way around might not be as adorable.

My bugs identified two bulbous eyes, two tentacles or floppy ears and a body that hugged the ground.

Yay, I got it right and it’s adorable!

Although the presence or absence of fur could still have a lot to say about that.

The insects I had resting on the surface of the water could feel it flowing up and to the sides of the slug.  A small mouth jetted streams of it at the fires of a building near her.  I assumed it was Genesis.  Educated guess.

Ahaha!

Taylor is a pretty serious character, but I love when her dry wit comes out in the narration.

“You had me at no holds barred,” she growled, rising from her crouch. 

Good to know you’re on board. 🙂

I didn’t dare to open my mouth, not with the risk of angering her and changing her mind.  I nodded instead.

Good call. You know how she feels about people talking too much anyway.

Together, we limped back to my lair.  Every step I took was a chore.  Where Grue and I had supported each other, Bitch didn’t offer me anything.

There’s still some distance to go, but with Bitch opening up a bit near the end here, I’m finally beginning to believe the friendship can be cultivated post-Extermination.

Also, while I think this line supports my point, it does also remind me of one thing that could be argued to be a borderline friendly gesture from Bitch: In Hive, when she let Taylor borrow her coat in order to hide her marks from being held by half-dragon Lung.

It bothered me a little; we could have ridden Sirius if we’d cooperated to help each other onto his back, but that wasn’t apparently in the cards.

…still some distance to go.

She’d spent years on her own, on the streets with only the company of her dogs, running any time a cop or cape came after her.  I itched to ask her if she’d suddenly had an increase in the amount of trouble she faced before she came to Brockton Bay.

Hmm. That does sound like something Coil might do. Stage more trouble to manipulate her into accepting his offer.

Trouble that could be precipitated by a certain ambitious supervillain?

No, it wasn’t the time.

Yeah, may want to hold off on that for now.

“You know that joining the Nine would get you the opposite of that.  It wouldn’t be the kind of power that gets you left alone.  It would be a life of being constantly chased, always in the company of people who are ten times as manipulative and two-faced as you think I am.”

And constantly running into trouble, on purpose.

“I know,” she spat.

See, I’ve been waiting for someone to confront Bitch about this, and now that it’s kind of happening, I actually think it’s no longer necessary? In-universe, anyway. From a story perspective, I do think this needed to be seen.

She picked up Bentley, then adjusted her grip to touch his nose with one hand.

Boop.

Whatever.  Down to brass tacks.  I gave her a second to cool down, then spoke, “They killed your dog, hurt Bentley, killed my people and torched my territory.  I want to take these fuckers down, no holds barred, and we’re going to need your help if we want to pull it off.  Screw going on the defensive, I-”

Oh yeah, they really do need Bitch. She’s got the strongest offensive capabilities of the Undersiders, and while the Travelers have some good offensive powers too, they can’t afford to spare that potential if they can help it.

She broke the lingering silence, “Coil told me that people would leave me alone if I got powerful enough.  If I had allies, if I had money, if I scared my enemies enough.”

That… doesn’t sound quite right, except maybe the last part.

“When was this?”

“Before I joined the Undersiders.  He didn’t tell me who he was.

Oh! I just figured it was during the talks about the territory plan.

Left me a phone with some cash, then called me a while later.  Fucking words that sounded good.  Learned my lesson.”

Words that sound good. The M.O. of the snake.

Not a snake. THE snake. The snake with legs that tempts the innocent.

Hey, it’d actually be oddly appropriate for Coil to lose his legs somehow while getting his comeuppance.

Bitch had reacted to something I’d said towards the end there, flinched, almost.

The kindred spirit thing, or the social struggles?

I sighed.  This isn’t accomplishing anything.  I looked at my territory.  The plumes of smoke had turned the sky a gray-black in color, some of which glowed faintly orange with the reflected light of the fires.

I mean, this is probably the most important interaction the two of you have ever had, but yeah. It’s kinda fruitless so far, in-universe.

The occasional spark floated through the air from one of the fires that burned around a nearby corner.

The world is in flames. Taylor’s world, anyway.

No.

Skitter’s world.

“You are not my friend,” she didn’t look up at me as she uttered the words.

This seems to imply a certain degree of dishonesty, a sense that she’s not certain enough about it to look Taylor in the eyes as she says it.

Unless of course it’s a setup to Bitch doing exactly that as she more forcefully repeats herself.

“Fine!  I’ve accepted that.  But you’re my friend, even if I don’t like you half the time.

That’s.

Not how friendship works, Taylor.

I know you’re not all that experienced with it, besides a certain treacherous harpy, but still.

Maybe we should get you some friendship lessons. Man, where’s a hole between realities when you need one… ah, here we go, straight to Ponyville. Go on, Taylor, right on through here, look for a big purple crystal castle, tell the princess Krixwell sent you.

You’re my teammate.  We’re similar.

Is that your idea of what makes Bitch your friend?

The only difference is that you went through your shit years ago, and I just got through dealing with mine a few weeks after I joined this team.  We’ve traveled down the same paths.  Whether you like it or not, we’re kindred spirits.  We both struggle with the social-”  I trailed off.

Yes, being similar can make it easier to befriend someone. It gives you something to relate to each other over. But there are plenty of people who are similar without being friends. Hell, plenty of people who are similar and enemies.

She scowled.  “I-”

“Don’t say you don’t.  Don’t say you could manage on your own.  You’ve seen these guys, and you’re not stupid.”

True.

She looked down at Bentley, putting one hand in front of his snout, as if to check he was still breathing.  “All you’re spewing out of your mouth-hole are words.  You only want to help yourself.”

I mean, yes, of course they’re words. What else do you want her to spew out of her mouth-hole, exactly? 😛

I wished there was something I could have hit, something I could have thrown.  I settled for an enraged groan.

Bitch is an interesting character, but a frustrating person.

“What’s it going to take to convince you!?  Why can’t you understand that I can and have put myself in harm’s way for you?  That despite all the shit between us and everything we’ve gone through, you’re my friend?”

I’m honestly not sure I’d go that far when describing their relationship.

Actually, that’s not true. I’m sure. I’m sure I wouldn’t, because I’ve had plenty of opportunities to and have avoided it.

I shook my head, and took a deep breath.  I forced myself to calm down before I spoke.  “I’m not interested in a pissing contest, Rachel.”

Thank you for stopping this here, although I would actually have been interested in Bitch’s perspective. I suppose we got some of that in her Interlude, though.

“Because you’d lose.”  She poked the knife in my direction, as if to punctuate her statement.

“I totally have a worse life than you. Here, let me stab you to prove it.”

“Because this isn’t a competition, and yeah, I’d lose.  I’m trying to tell you that we’re not that different.”

I do appreciate that Taylor acknowledges that yes, she’d lose that. It helps put a little more weight on the “this isn’t a competition” part.

She scoffed.

God, my legs and feet hurt.  My ribs weren’t exactly sunshine and rainbows either.

Which parts of the ribcage would be the sunshine? I mean, the rainbows would obviously be the bow-like rib bones themselves, but where does the sunshine go? Would the sunshine be filling up the chest cavity? Or maybe it would make up the part of the spine that’s commonly depicted along with the ribs?

Except Taylor doesn’t say “ribcage”, she says “ribs”. Maybe the ribs are made up out of some sort of mixture of sunshine and rainbows? Then again, rainbows are made up partially of sunshine in the first place. Maybe there are some drier parts of normal ribs that would be pure sunshine, while the wetter parts would be rainbows?

Also, what would the medical implications of this be? I don’t think sunshine and its wet byproduct rainbows are particularly good defenses for the internal organs, and may have trouble keeping the chest from collapsing in on itself. You need quite a lot of sunshine to apply a noticeable force on something. I don’t know how much mixing water into it helps with that, though, so maybe rainbows are a little sturdier.

So yeah, that’s probably a good thing, Taylor.

I felt like I had to do something to distract myself.  If it hadn’t been my legs that hurt, I would have wanted to pace back and forth, or run, or something.  I tried to focus on Bitch.  “Fine.  Don’t believe me.  Here’s the nitty-gritty facts, then.  You’re a member of our team.  We need you, and whether you like it or not, you need us.”

Better hope this doesn’t make her question how much she does.