Siberian flickered and disappeared.  Tattletale’s jaw dropped.

Close enough. She’d have run instead if they hadn’t let on that they already knew her secret.

So was the entire point of this to reroute Siberian’s focus so this part of the team can escape with Amy?

“Shit,” Trickster cursed, “She-”

“Just get a phone!  Warn them!”

Or did you not expect her to go to her teammates’ (Bonesaw’s) aid?

I mean, at first it seemed they didn’t expect her to go that quickly, but it sounds like they didn’t have their immediate response to her going planned out.

“Reason number two, we’re aiming to kill you.  See, we know about your… other self.”

So, why are you letting her know that you know?

There wasn’t the slightest reaction from Siberian.

I wonder if she would have reacted if Taylor had indeed found her real self with the bugs earlier.

“And the third reason, I think you should know, is sort of tied into the first.  We’re making you waste time.  Longer you take to kill Panacea, here, the better off we are.

Ah, yeah, I suppose that’s true.

Awfully arrogant of you to leave your team and go off to pick off candidates like Amy.  The rest of your team?  Crawler, Jack, Mannequin and Bonesaw?  Right this second, they’re getting a surprise visit from the rest of our team.  What do you think-”

Ohhh. Well that answers that lingering question!

So is she getting cut off because Siberian lunged? Or ran towards “home”?

“I think you should know,” Tattletale smiled, “We’re here for three reasons.”

Three…

1. save Amy
2. stop Siberian
3. ???
4. profit

I suppose “help Cherish” might count, but that’s more like a coincidence and tool than a goal.

So what do you have in mind, Tattle?

Siberian’s eyes narrowed.

“Reason number one, we’re trying to save that girl.  I mean, if I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t know if I would have risked it, but we do have some more compassionate people on our team.”  She glanced at me.  “For better or worse.”

Bit of both, yeah, depending on your point of view.

I could see Siberian flex her fingers.  Her nails were long, and they were sharp.

Usually it takes a couple more personal lines before people start physically showing a desire to strangle Tattletale.

There wasn’t anything special about them, on an aesthetic level, but they did have the benefit of her power.  If she raked those across a surface, they would leave gouges.

Yeah, absolutely.

Didn’t matter how hard or dense the material was.

The Mohs scale crumbles at her touch!

And there was Siberian.  Faintly glowing eyes, black and white striped skin, straight hair in similar variations of black and white, trailing to her tailbone.

Why did you dismiss the darkness, Grue? Did you think it made it too difficult for everyone to get their bearings before Siberian found them anyway?

“Thank you, Grue,” Tattletale said.  Had she asked him to cancel out his power?  It wasn’t like he was borrowing any power that would work on Siberian, and as for the concealment effects, they wouldn’t do much.

I still suspect Siberian’s own power might work against her, but she’d be way more powerful in that mirror match.

And, as it turned out, she wanted to talk.

Right. Let’s Tattletale this bitch.

Better hope she’s more willing to listen than Jack was.

She pulled herself up to a standing position and raised one hand, palm facing Siberian.  “Hold on.”

“Hey, infamously unstoppable monster, could you stop for a sec?”

Siberian stopped.

Turns out the key to stopping her was simply asking nicely.

It took her a few seconds to realize we weren’t Siberian.  She might have calmed down at that realization, but she didn’t get a chance.

I hope at no point during pulling her up did you touch her skin. That might’ve ended badly, before she could complete the thought “I can sense their biology, so they’re not Siberian”.

Siberian closed the gap in a single bound, crashing into Bentley, Lisa, Trickster and Sundancer and shoving them forward into the rest of us.

shit

We sprawled, and I felt my leg bend painfully as Sirius rolled over it.

Yeah that’d do it alright. Most legs don’t deal well with being rolled over by cars. Or car-sized dogs.

Fortunately there’s a healer around, if you can keep her and yourselves alive.

Grue banished his darkness.  I could see the six of us and the two dogs, lying on the road. Nobody dead.

Wait, you didn’t banish it entirely, did you? Even if Siberian’s found you, you don’t want her to see you more than absolutely necessary to get your own bearings.

I shouldn’t have been looking for people.  I should have been looking for vehicles.  Had I overlooked anything like a truck or a van interior he could be hiding inside?

Now we’re talking.

Or was he still in a location outside of my range?  Or -I wasn’t ignoring the possibility- had Cherish lied or misled us?

This is the kind of thing I do on this blog: Even if I think an option is unlikely (Taylor already mentioned that she doesn’t think Cherish lied), I still try to acknowledge it and keep it in mind.

Damn it!  The extra possibility threw my hopes of finding the man totally out of whack.

You can do it!

My respect for Grue grew a hundredfold as he veered straight for Amy without my asking him to.  We swept past her, and I caught her around the shoulder.

YES

Grue offered one hand, and we lifted her together, kicking and struggling, onto my lap.  I wrapped one arm around her chest, to keep her securely in place.  She was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating.

I really can’t blame her one bit.

Something caught her attention.  A vibration in the road?

Hmm.

Maybe that’s what she’s been stopping to sense for?

Or had she used her power to protect the ground, and sensed some impact as the dogs walked on it?

Which would also work to find Amy.

Either way, she started to chase us.  We could have turned at a right angle, to hopefully throw her off, but both Grue and I knew that if we did, and she continued straight, she’d run straight into Amy.

Well, fuck.

Fast.  She was fast.  Not as much as Battery or Velocity might have been on a good day, but highly mobile.

…maybe the real body isn’t. Like with Genesis, a trigger event involving that kind of thing could result in a power that lets you move around in a separate body with incredible mobility and strength.

Maybe look for wheelchairs and the like?

It is worth noting that Siberian needs to be able to have their real body follow along without it being significantly slower than the Nine overall.

The thought clicked into the blank I was looking to fill.  How was her alter ego getting around?  I’d assumed he was traveling on foot because that was how ninety-percent of the city was getting by.  Very few cars on the road had access to gas and the ability to traverse the broken, flooded streets.  But if there was a range limit to the projection, how was he keeping up with the woman who could ignore air resistance and leap across a city block in a single bound?

Also a really good point! That’s why I’ve suggested trying to get her to the edge of the range, though I’m not sure what it’d accomplish.

With my directions, we looped around the mall and made a beeline for Amy.  Siberian was advancing too, but while she was in the right general area, she didn’t have a means of finding Amy, specifically.  Instead, she leaped from one area to another, pausing for a second or two at a time.

Yeah, gonna be a bit of trial and error here. Hopefully.

What was she doing?

It seems like she might actually have something she expects to be able to detect Amy at a short range, whether it can get past the darkness or not. Maybe something like super-scent?

I swept the area with my power, but I couldn’t find anyone resembling Cherish’s description of Siberian’s real self.

Damn, this is getting kinda suspect. Did Cherish mislead them for some reason?

Or maybe Siberian’s real body has been stowed away in a bug-proof location, anticipating an attack by Skitter somehow?

Was I missing something?  If Cherish had been lying outright, I was under the impression that Lisa would have caught some tell.  There had to be something else to it.

Good point.

Something I could use to identify the man behind the monster.

What was she?  Unstoppable, a deceptively strong, deceptively tough juggernaut of a woman.

And that might be reflected by the other body looking similarly frail but being stronger than one might expect?

And we’re back!