I had to remind myself he was a specialist in hostile environments, and they didn’t get much more hostile than this.  He was a genius, a problem solver, and a survivor.  He was relentless, and as much as I’d managed to take the advantage in our previous confrontations, that was because he’d been out of his element, taking us on directly.

And this time… he’s in his element…

Yeeah, maybe avoid direct confrontation if you can help it.

This was Mannequin’s specialty: attacking from the indirect angle, at the unexpected moment to target the weak.  He favored Tinkers both because they were often vulnerable if you caught them without their gear, and for his own neuroses.

Makes sense.

Weld managed to push the car that was pinning him from the side.  Holding the stack of vehicles up over his head, he found a point where he could set his foot without the scorched frame collapsing and kicked the car away.

Woo, go Weld!

As he tried to figure out how to manage the pile of flaming cars that sat atop him and his teammates, Mannequin struck.  Like a piston, Mannequin slammed into him, thrusting him away, then danced back into the cover of the flames and smoke.  Weld slid on the pavement until he collided with a car, and the cars that he’d been supporting collapsed.

And yeah, here Mannequin goes with his carefully and unpredictably timed attacks.

At least one fell so that Cache’s upper body speared through its undercarriage.  The top one tipped over and landed so it was propped up on a diagonal.

You know, normally, the idea that someone’s “upper body speared through [a car’s] undercarriage” is not a good thing. But here it means Cache avoided death by not having been unfrozen yet.

What could I do?  I didn’t have a long ranged weapon.  I didn’t trust my beetle’s ability to hold me and some heavy weight I could drop on Mannequin from above.

Not sure you can carry anything heavy enough to make much of a difference anyway. Maybe Bailey could, if he weren’t carrying you, but it’s a stretch.

Cache and Clockblocker wouldn’t be frozen forever.  It could be as short a time as thirty seconds.  If Cache or Clockblocker emerged from the effects of Clockblocker’s power, and there were two cars piled on top of them?  It would be grim.

Ahhh, yeah, that’s not ideal.

Clockblocker might be okay, freezing the bottom car the moment he’s free, but Cache might not be so lucky if he unfreezes before Clocky.

Worse, Cache was storing a number of the other heroes in his personal dimension.  What would happen to them if he died?

That’s a damn good question.

In some ‘verses I’d say the answer would be [EJECT]. But this is Worm. I’m inclined to think Cache a) acts as a gateway and they might be stuck in there until they die of thirst if he doesn’t survive to get them back out, or b) acts as a container and if he goes squish, so does the pocket dimension.

They had to have anticipated the possibility of Crawler interfering before they all recovered, but Mannequin?  I was surprised he was able to function in the midst of this blaze.

He probably took measures to be more resistant to explosions and fire after the gas encounter.

So when a piece of metal gets stuck to Weld, does it immediately become part of his body and thus likely to attack to any other metals it touches? That seems likely to me.

Weld pushed hard against the flaming hulk of the car, attempting to make room to free himself, but another car sailed through the air to land on top of Cache and Weld.

Shouldn’t the first car be stuck to his body anyway? And to his hands as well, now? At least if I understood Weld’s state of dress correctly.

Maybe the polish helps.

While Weld hacked at the cars, shearing through the undercarriage to make for pieces that were smaller to move, Mannequin began moving through the parking lot, pushing at more cars to get them closer to Weld and his teammates.  A minivan, a sedan, a pickup, pushed into Weld’s immediate surroundings.

He’s almost swimming in cars at this point… this must be what they call a carpool.

There was no swagger, no monologue, nothing from Mannequin but the methodical execution of his simple plan.  He approached the front of the pickup, tore off the hood and grabbed the engine block with all four arms.  Again, the billowing vapor and that explosive strength, as he brought it over his head and down on top of the second car he’d thrown, stacking them two high.

Hmm. This vapor… a byproduct of whatever he’s added that makes him so strong? Maybe something that can be used against him.

He crouched beneath the sedan and prepared to launch it as he had with the first two cars.

Poor Weld is going to come back to the Wards HQ struggling to carry like five cars that are stuck to his body.

It was Mannequin.  Of all of them, he was the hardest to make out as he moved close to the ground, slipping between cars and through the flames to disappear from Weld’s sight.

I realized at the end of the last post that she was looking at the fight using her eyes rather than her bugs, thus invalidating the stated half of my reasoning for why it’d be Mannequin (the other half being that he’d been remarkably unseen thus far), but I’m still going to call this a win.

Oh, and a third half I didn’t consider: Bonesaw and Jack can’t do shit to Weld directly (or at least, Jack would need a lot of range) with their specialties, and Weld wouldn’t be defending the time-stopped heroes in quite the same way against their attacks.

He had four arms, one set longer than the other, which combined with his jerky movements to give him an almost bug-like demeanor.

Quick, Taylor, control him! :p

I watched as he paused at the rear of one car, crouching with his two sets of arms at the bumper, then unfolded explosively, steam or vapor billowing around him as he launched the car through the air.

Mannequin and Lung have a thing in common: From a writing perspective, they’re both good for repeat encounters thanks to bodily changes.

Lung had several stages, allowing for very different fights depending on which stage he starts in (even as Lung has pretty thoroughly lost relevance, I’m still not entirely convinced we won’t see him fully draconic some day).

Meanwhile, Mannequin adapts, changing his body after each loss and adding new features that change the game next time.

These features make these two more interesting to read about when the same characters go up against them again.

It wasn’t much distance, only ten or so feet, but the car rolled and slammed into Weld, knocking the junior hero into his frozen teammates and pinning him there.

Weld, looking down at the car stuck to his chest: “Shit. This is gonna take a while to get rid of.”

So few bugs were alive down there.  Some had retreated beneath the pavement, or into the lowermost parts of nearby buildings, but the heat and the hot air was killing them.

I like the contrast between the situation before and after the bombs hit, regarding how many bugs are available. Before, she had way more bugs than usual, and now she has… pretty much just a handful or five.

Some died quickly, others slow.  I was careful about how close I got, devoting extra attention to ensuring that the beetle didn’t perish or find himself unable to fly as the heat damaged his wings.

Yeah, try not to go upside down Icarus on us.

Wait, would that involve “falling” up into the sea of the stars when the wings break?

Amy had made him durable, but there was a limit to how far I wanted to push my luck when there was two hundred feet of open air between me and the ground, and a sea of fire waiting for any scenario where I managed to survive the impact.

Yeah, that’s quite reasonable.

It was a bit of a task, to focus on flying -there was no autopilot like there was with my other bugs- and to track the remaining bugs on the ground.  The sewers and storm drains were hot, but hospitable.  Navigation would be difficult for Jack and Bonesaw underground.  Between Leviathan’s active destruction of the storm drains and the more passive deterioration as they got clogged with rubble and debris and flooded, there were few spaces underground where the villains would be able to navigate.

So if they went down there, they probably wouldn’t get out anywhere useful.

Had they died?  It was possible, and I was swiftly eliminating areas where there was both a population of bugs and space for the Nine to hide.

I don’t think any of them are dead, but if one of them is, it’s Mannequin or Bonesaw. More likely Mannequin out of those two, because he’s been fairly irrelevant ever since his second defeat by Taylor.

Also worth noting: We don’t know what fresh hell Bonesaw was up to this time with the civilians she “recruited”. I have a feeling we’ll find out somehow.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Scout.  See if there’s any clues about the opposition’s movements.  If you can’t figure anything out on that front, track Crawler from above.

Keep in mind that the “opposition” currently also includes the Protectorate.

They’ll have some agreed-upon place to meet, and he could lead us to the other four… you haven’t seen Legend?”

He was last seen chasing Siberian, right?

“No.”

“Then I’d bet he’s still chasing Siberian.  Or minimizing the damage she can do, anyways. He can’t hurt her, but she’s at a disadvantage as long as she has to carry that truck and protect the occupant.  Legend will know how to use that.”

Excellent. If we can keep her out of this fray, that would be great.

“Right.”

“So Crawler will maybe lead us to the other three.”

Sounds reasonable.

Though it’s worth noting that we still haven’t sensed Mannequin here in any way. He’s able to avoid Taylor’s bugs, but he’s not one for staying out of sight (then again, neither is Jack). I’m wondering if he’s even here at all.

“On it.”  I hung up.

I’d dealt with it against Lung, I’d dealt with it against Burnscar.  Fire was something of a problem when it came to using my power.

Yeeah. Major type advantage. At least in this case nobody’s actively controlling the fire.

Unless Bonesaw went back for Burnscar’s corpse.

“Places to look, anyways.”

“We can’t get to them if they are there.”

I suppose not. Taylor may be able to descend and find them with her surviving bugs, but they’ll probably be long gone by the time anyone else could get there.

Also, going back in after the first round of bombings is a supremely bad idea. You have no idea how bad it is, but even without the knowledge that Bakuda bombs are coming soon, you should still be wary of the possibility of a second barrage. That’s just a good tactic for the PRT to do: Lull any of the Nine or Undertravelers who found cover into a false sense of security, then strike again.

“And they can’t get away, either.  Jack’s slippery, but he’s pinned down for the time being.  Just one second.”

Is that something your power is telling you about physical obstacles, or just a logical result of Jack being the kind of smart cookie who’d see the second strike coming?

Or both?

I could hear other voices in the background.

A few seconds later, Tattletale was back on the phone, “Genesis is already making a body that can withstand the fire.  Sundancer thinks she can clear away some of the blaze by flash-burning the oxygen from the area and drawing the heat and flame into her sun.  If she can, it might give us some elbow room.”

No, seriously, do not fucking go back in there

Well.

If they’re not gonna listen to me, I guess we know how the Bakuda bombs become relevant now.

“The fire will have undone the silk bindings,” I said.

Fuck, good point. Better make sure he can’t jump hundreds of feet.

“Can you do it again?”

“Not here, not anytime soon.”

Yeah, he’s currently a bit out of range.

“Okay.”

“What are the odds that Bonesaw and Jack survived?”

“Too high.”

Especially Jack, from a narrative perspective.

I stared down at the inferno.  The tallest fires had dwindled, but a carpet of fire covered everything for a five block radius.  Cars that had been mostly intact were charred hulks now, and the explosions had torn chunks out of buildings, or the flames hollowed out the interiors.

Hey, Piggot, I hope you have people ready to stop these fires from spreading too far.

“How would he survive this?”

“How would you survive this?” she asked.  “Or- if you didn’t know precisely what was happening, where would you find the most secure cover?”

In Bonesaw’s case, she might hide inside a body again. Or maybe make a pillow fort, except the pillows are people.

I thought back to the options I had considered.  “The sewer?  Or find a bank vault?  Not sure if the sewers or storm drains wouldn’t collapse, and the bank vault could easily become an oven.”

Though considering the bank vault becoming an oven kind of requires you to have an idea that high temperatures are involved. In any case, there are more drawbacks to that idea, such as breaking into the vault taking time if your name ain’t Crawler or Siberian.