Couldn’t match their speed, not with these noxious clouds slowing me down.  With the heroine lying unconscious in the street, several blocks in the wrong direction, I had no allies to turn to.

Hell, you don’t even know that Battery would trust you if you did meet up with her.

Worse, anyone I came across was as likely as not to be a threat. It was down to Atlas and me, and Atlas was especially vulnerable to both of my opponents.

…he is? I mean, Jack’s good against flying, but how is he vulnerable to Bones-oh, the gas, got it.

I couldn’t even fly after them without risking being cut down in midair.

I had minimal information on my opponents, while they knew enough about me to completely counter my powers.  Topping it all off, the mechanical spiders were steadily, inexorably closing in on me.

Would be great if her power decided the spiderbots were “close enough”.

I’d lost my last fight with the things, and there were dozens more this time around.  Couldn’t fly without exposing myself to Jack’s power, couldn’t stay on the ground without getting swarmed.

…hover?

She tipped half the vial’s contents into an empty container and handed it to Jack.  Both protected from my power, they started backing away.

I’m sorry, I can’t help but imagine them moonwalking, and from there the image of Jack Slash in the role of Michael Jackson just springs into my mind. Especially him using those weighted shoes MJ had that let him dip really far forward.

Jack would rock the dark version of that outfit, too. I suppose Bonesaw could join in with a small light version.

I moved to edge around the cloud of black smoke, but Jack struck me with the knife.  I had to use my forearms to cover my unprotected face.

Why was her face unprotected, again? I forget.

I just had my glasses, some bugs, and a layer of cloth protecting it.  Nothing that would guard against Jack’s cuts.

Yeeah, might wanna keep that out of line of slash.

All the more reason to get rid of the white smoke. If she can use her bugs to sense what she can’t see while protecting her face, she’ll be much better off.

When I’d lowered my arms, they had already turned a corner, running in the general direction of Arcadia high.

Time to take ‘em to school.

Wait, no, that’s where we don’t want them going.

Running around the cloud of black smoke cost me a precious minute.  I made my way around the same corner they’d rounded, and stopped short as I came face to face with another black cloud.

I suppose they anticipated her following the same way.

“You won’t live to,” I told him.

Very possible, especially if I’m right.

“I’ll make sure he does,” the girl informed me.

I mean, living as a zombie of sorts doesn’t count.

My swarm could feel others approach from the heroine’s direction.

But have they managed to trust each other?

Incidentally, could Battery somehow have avoided the miasma’s effect and successfully identified the members of the Nine?

They were the size of dogs, and they skipped forward on mechanical legs.

Oh. Those don’t sound friendly.

The mechanical spiders.  Dozens of them, coming straight for me.

If I was judging right, they were running faster than I could.

Welp.

I sent the swarm after Jack and the girl, massed into thousands of bugs.  Some groups clustered so tight together that they looked like massive, amorphous black entities, amoebas floating through a cityscape painted in shades of red and black.

Cod damn, the aesthetic of this whole section of the Arc is so cool.

Atlas heard my call and headed my way from the place I’d positioned him, too far away to join the fight for a minute or two.

Hey, how did Bonesaw know Taylor had named Atlas? Was that just a guess?

The girl was already mixing something else together.  Plumes of white smoke billowed around her, almost luminescent after so long spent in the crimson mist.  My bugs died on contact with the gas.

Ahh, here go the anti-bug measures.

Everything I’d learned about my enemies had been blocked.  I had no information on them, no sense of what to expect.  They weren’t so handicapped.

Having the information blocked like this is a very bad thing in this story. Knowledge is power and right now Taylor can’t access much of it.

My bugs began to gather like a dark cloud, their mass casting a shadow on the already gloomy surroundings.

There’s a storm a-brewing.

“So I end the world?  Interesting.”

You’re more like a catalyst, somehow, but yeah.

“The source is a little unreliable,” I lied.

You think that’s gonna deter him, Taylor? I’m pretty sure that’s just gonna make him more intrigued.

“Still, I would love to see how that comes about.”

I’m interested in that too. I think I’ve got a fairly decent pet theory on it that doesn’t actually require you to leave the city (”in every timeline where Jack leaves the city alive the threat is catalyzed” doesn’t mean that every timeline where he doesn’t leave the city alive is safe), but who knows. That theory doesn’t fully explain it anyway, so exactly how that would play out is also interesting.

Actually, I should probably recap in case some of my readers have forgotten this theory: I think Jack already did the thing that catalyzes the threat, all the way back in Interlude 11b. He set Theo on a path to become a cape in two years, and I suspect that this somehow leads to the threat. Perhaps if Jack hadn’t done what he did then, Theo would’ve triggered later, explaining the difference in timescales. Exactly how Theo becoming a cape leads to the future threat is a bit up in the air, but there are certainly ways it could happen. The simplest of them being that his power is ridiculously strong and uncontrollable.

The knife cut the girl more than it cut me.  I could feel it raking across the exterior of my costume, failing to penetrate, but he was swinging it underhand, and it caught me in the chin, slicing through the side of my cheek and up to my temple.

Ouch.

I tried to keep a hold on the girl for the sake of using her as a human shield, but I saw her reach into her dress and withdraw some vials.

Oh jeez, what does she have now? More stuff to put in the water?

I shoved her toward Jack, then stepped forward to kick her square between the shoulder blades.  She collided with him, interrupting his follow-up swing.

You’ve got some nice moves here, Taylor!

For good measure, I drew the bugs from beneath my costume and sent them chasing after her.  Some capsaicin-laced bugs, just the few I had remaining.

Awesome. I’m not sure how well that’s gonna work – Bonesaw has a history of not giving a flying feather about the bug stings – but at least it reduces visibility for the Nine and increases Taylor’s sensory abilities.

Jack caught her shoulders and spun her around so she faced me.  The vials were already billowing with a chemical reaction.

Uh oh.

Hm. Would she do the same thing she did in Dolltown again, to ward off the bugs?

Or is this gonna be something new? That seems more like Bonesaw.

She threw them at me.

I backed away, and they hit the ground between our two groups, black smoke joining the crimson mist around us.

If it were the same thing she wouldn’t throw them. Probably best to stay clear of the smoke if you can.

The fact that Taylor didn’t seem nearly as affected by the miasma as “Brian” and “Lisa”.

“Lisa” being as adamant about swearing as a certain other blonde.

All the fucking signs!

The miasma’s effects had almost made me lose track of her.  She was fighting, grappling with mechanical spiders.

Ah, I see Bonesaw’s put her minions to work.

It’s looking like Taylor is right.

She went from fighting like an ordinary individual to moving at high speeds and throwing crushing punches, then back again.

Battery?

I couldn’t think of how to help her, and she was obviously unable to help me.

Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn’t rate her all that highly against the Nine, even if it’s just these two, but she’s got a chance.

Cherish had been engaging in double-speak, saying one thing to us, while addressing the two people with me the entire time.  She’d told them about where she was being held captive, and she’d offered the most valuable information she had to avoid getting tortured to death after they’d freed her.

And Jack is totally the kind of guy who’d learn Latin for the hell of it.

But what does Jack want to do with that information? Leave the city? He ought to be thrilled at the chance of having such an impact.

From the way she’d talked about the message being received, one of the people with me had to be Jack.

Yeah, I don’t think Siberian’s in any state to be playing this game right now.