“My power’s not detecting him either,” Grue replied, “But my coverage is bad.  Give me a second and I’ll let you know the second my darkness connects with him.”

Ohh, I see, that’s why he did that.

Also, the slowing of the darkness’ generation is rearing its head as a weakness. Though apparently it spreads faster, doesn’t it, so that’s something.

Siberian had noticed the darkness, and I could see her contemplating coming after us, striking at the source of the darkness.

Uh oh.

I guess that’s part of why he was reluctant to use it.

Instead, she turned and began making her way toward Amy.  The darkness continued to flow, low to the ground, tendrils rising to bind together and fill in gaps, and my view of Siberian was soon blocked.

Well, at least you’ve got bugs, but somehow I feel like they’d have a hard time hanging on to her.

There was another explosion as Trickster deployed another grenade, but it wouldn’t serve as anything but a split-second distraction.

A bit higher up than the darkness, I’d imagine.

“Please.”

“Right.”  His darkness began to flow from his hands.  I climbed up onto Sirius’s back, and Grue was a step behind, taking a seat in front of me.

“Any luck?” Tattletale asked.  She’d seated herself on Bentley, her hands on the chain around his neck, and both Trickster and Sundancer were behind her.

So where are they riding off to now? Direct confrontation is the last thing they want.

I suppose they might have to move around a bit to find Siberian’s real body, depending on Siberian’s range.

My bugs were still searching for the real Siberian.  Or her creator, depending on how one wanted to look at it.  I was reaching the edges of my range and I hadn’t found anyone suitable.  I did find two adult men that were together.  Could she have made a friend in her real identity?

Entirely possible, I suppose.

Also, while I’m willing to go along with the flesh and meat being their real body, I’m not willing to assume their real body has their “real identity”.

Just to be safe, I set my bugs on the pair of them.  I didn’t use anything deadly, but I had bugs biting and stinging without flexing their abdomens to inject the accompanying venom.  Siberian didn’t react to my assault of the men.

Well, sucks for the two of them, then.

I put each of them down as a ‘maybe’, planting bugs in the folds of their clothes to mark them.

“Can’t find her maker,” I said.

Keep in mind that by using this terminology, you’re signing away any right to use one-liners about “meeting your maker” to Monochrome Siberian while killing them.

“Really need a distraction,” I said.

“Are you still looking for the real Siberian?”  Tattletale asked.

“Of course I am!”  I snapped.  I might have gone on to point out how we were also here to save her.

And finding the real body is probably the best way to do that, but you gotta keep Amy alive long enough to find it.

To save Amy Dallon.  I kept my mouth shut: pointless to waste my breath or dedicate any focus to arguing when I could be trying to deal with Siberian.

This is a two-front battle, and Taylor is largely fighting both sides alone, with a slight bit of aid from the rest of the team.

Trickster was looking through his binoculars, holding one grenade.  I saw him pull the pin a second before the grenade in his hand was replaced by a fragment of building.

Ohh. That way he can cause rubble to fall down and mess things up for Siberian.

Briefly.

An explosion erupted a matter of feet from Siberian.  The smoke cleared quickly enough, and I saw her turning her head, looking for the unseen attacker.  I ducked my head low to get more cover from the ruined wall we all lurked behind.

And distract her, right.

“Grue?” I asked.

He hesitated.

Oh damn, do you intend to make this a monochrome-on-monochrome fight?

I mean, yes, Siberian is way stronger that Grue’s monochrome, but that’d still be awesome. Might even get past Monochrome Siberian’s invulnerability like Siberian did with Alexandria. And if it doesn’t, Siberian might not be able to get past Grue’s monochrome’s probably somewhat weaker invulnerability.

I’d known that using the decoys would provoke Siberian.  She wanted to drive home that inevitability of her target’s fate, and that meant she would stop playing around the second she thought Amy might really escape.

Ah, yeah, wouldn’t want the target to get any funny ideas about having a chance of Siberian attacking a decoy instead.

That was the bad.

The way you say that makes it sound like there’s “a good”? Maybe even an ugly?

I suppose the ugly would be Siberian’s real body.

The good side of things caught me by surprise.  As though a switch was flicked, my power suddenly surged back to its normal strength.  Amy was killing the bugs she’d fucked up, so they weren’t scrambling my power anymore.  She’d realized I was trying to help.

Nice!

Now let’s see if we can’t find the ugly and put an end to this.

“Should I attack?”  Sundancer asked.

“No,” Grue almost barked the word.  “You’ll give away our location.”

Yeah, I suppose it’d be hard to miss where the literal miniature sun came soaring from.

Sundancer is going to prove useful by the end of this, somehow.

“Let me,” Trickster said.

While Trickster unclipped grenades from the belt of his costume, I focused on Amy.  She was standing, slowly, masked by a swarm.

What are the grenades supposed to accomplish, exactly? Or the sun, for that matter?

Distractions? Making the ground a little less runnable?

If I sent a decoy running in one direction, I was almost positive it would get Amy killed.  She couldn’t run faster than Siberian, and however much I scattered the decoys, Siberian could dispatch them all and get her hands on the real Amy in a matter of seconds.

Bad idea.

If I moved a decoy too fast, it would be a dead giveaway as a fake.

Because the real Amy would not be able to run fast enough for Siberian to not catch her immediately.

With a throwing motion, she whipped one section of the truck over her head, hurling it forward so it crashed through no less than five of my decoy swarms.

Damn, nice shot.

She did a tight spin as she stepped forward and made the second throw into a smooth continuation of the first.

She’s done this plenty of times before, clearly.

Her accuracy wasn’t quite so good for the second hit.  It crashed through the water and hit the ground before it rolled out of my line of sight.  It was only through my swarm that I felt it hit Amy and my decoy swarms.

Oof.

Wait a minute.

Did I ask Amy to get out of the water, earlier? In Brockton Bay??

I’m sorry for demanding the impossible, Amy. I meant getting up and away from the particular spot in the water you were at.

Most of the momentum was lost in the initial impact, and it didn’t pulverize her.  She was in one piece, at least.

That’s good. A start.

In retrospect, that might have been intentional on Siberian’s part.

Don’t want to break her chewtoy that quickly!

Also, “in retrospect”… is that Taylor in the moment realizing that just long enough after the fact to call it “in retrospect”, or are we briefly dealing with the Taylor who’s telling the story of her past here?

“She’s advancing,” Tattletale reported.

“Yeah,” I replied, absently.  I was focusing on getting my bugs on site.  The bugs that had surrounded Amy and formed the decoys in her immediate vicinity were still there, and I gathered them into humanoid shapes again.

Fortunately, bugs are good at avoiding big things that are coming towards them.

I didn’t have line of sight to her, but I could feel them rising in what must have looked like a very human way.

Niice.

I had to cover her, though, so having my bugs near her was unavoidable.  Amy needed to be one-hundred percent out of Siberian’s sight before we acted.

Why? What are you planning?

As if she was actively seeking to make things harder on us, she took a route that carried her out of sight of our binoculars, behind a building.  Not that she knew we were there.  It was bad luck.

Yeah, she’s probably just trying to escape the bugs.

And Siberian, of course.

I focused my binoculars on Siberian, instead.  Her hair drifted in the wind.  The length she wasn’t holding in her hand fanned out, briefly.

You need wind to get the badass hair in the wind effect? Amateur.

“If the wind moves her hair like that, is that a clue?” I asked, looking at Tattletale.  “Like the dust on Glory Girl’s clothes hinting that she wasn’t covered by her forcefield?”

I dunno, is there any particular reason for it to be?

“Ninety-five percent sure I’m right on this score, but her power probably copies her real body’s physiology to some degree, molding all the internal organs and whatever else with whatever reality-scrambling-stuff she’s made of.

So the hair… is probably so that it can be blown by the wind because the same applies to their real body?

Her call about what parts of her are affected by what, so I don’t-”  She stopped, “Heads up.” 

Ahh, which means they do have some control. For example, they could decide that their form shouldn’t reflect their secondary sexual characteristics (it already doesn’t reflect the primary ones, if Grue’s monochrome form is anything to go by, unless that’s optional too).

Is it weird that I wonder whether or not Monochrome Siberian has nipples, about whether those are removed because the form is sexless? Honestly, I’m inclined to think they wouldn’t be, because female nipples aren’t naturally sexual.

just sexy