The woman had been a bitch anyways.

Heh.

Lisa watched out of the corner of her eye as the cashier picked up the phone, her eye on attitude, posture, body language, volume of speech.

Worry; calling coworker, not getting response.
Quiet, hushed; hiding anxiety from customers.  Wants to convey professionalism, confidence.
Anxiety, wants to convey professionalism: new to the job, only started two weeks ago.  Doesn’t know how to open safe: not much money in register.  Doesn’t know how to close store alone.

See, in general, this sounds like a Holmes-style look-over (the associations with that are intense) and mostly reasonable assumptions, but there’s no way that would be able to tell her details as specific as “two weeks ago”. It seems like this is a case of her power in action as she “pays attention” and lets the information flow in.

Still no response desperately needs break for bathroom and to sneak a smoke not allowed to smoke on the job looks bad for customers and manager has hard stance on it making clothes smell.

I like that. Fuck smoking.

■

Huh. Wasn’t expecting that right there. Are we going back to the past again?

Getting rid of the saleswoman had been easy-peasy.  The bit about the cheating boyfriend had been an outright lie.

Ahaha, nice.

In a similar vein, the part where she’d mentioned the best friend had been an educated guess, but the salesgirl, Tasha, wasn’t the type to have a friend prettier than her.

That’s… quite possibly the most backhanded way I’ve ever heard of saying someone’s pretty.

So, if Lisa wasn’t using her power to do that (we don’t know how she knew Tasha’s full name yet, but it’s possible she had a name tag or something), maybe she doesn’t have it yet – maybe we’ll get to see her trigger event in this Interlude?

The way she’d obsessed over her phone and the revelation about the eating disorder were clue enough that the woman had been deeply insecure.

I see. Sherlisa Holmes, eh?

…heh, I don’t know her surname yet, so for all I know…

By the time she realized she’d been played, she would still feel compelled to hurry home and check.  Probably bad karma to leverage that sort of weakness, but it meant getting one obstacle out of the way.

So that leaves Daniella, right?

“Get Ready!” Legend cried out.

Tattletale grinned, turning her full attention to the Endbringer from beneath the waves.  It was crouching, preparing to charge.

Aaand here we go.

Using her power wasn’t a switch she turned on.

Oooh, time for some exposition on how it works? That said, we’re probably leading up to a segment where she knows a lot about all the people who are hurt or killed in this upcoming attack… ouch.

It was letting the walls come down, letting the information start pouring in.  It meant a killer migraine if she used it too much, especially on people or living things, but if she had a headache three hours from now, it would be a damn good thing.  It would mean she was alive.

True.

Also, I suppose the added penalty for using it too much on people or living things might be a manifestation of the Manton effect. At least she’s able to do it at all, which is pretty good compared to some other characters. I’m sure Faultline would be fine with getting some migraines if it meant she could use her power on her enemies and green wood.

“If I die,” she spoke, leaving no room for further argument, “An envelope should arrive in the mail for me, a week or two after I’ve bitten it.  I wrote it.  It’s got all my passwords and account numbers for the money I’ve set aside, so far.  You guys take it, give some to Taylor if you run into her.”

Nice.

“Alright,” Grue spoke.  Tattletale quirked an eyebrow at him.  She’d expected more resistance.

He may not be on the best terms with Taylor right now, but he’s not going to disrespect Lisa’s dying will.

“And if you happen to get yourself killed, we’ll make sure Aisha gets what she needs.  Just so you know.”

🙂

He didn’t voice a response, but he nodded once.

She cast another glance Skitter’s way.  She should’ve asked, before they parted ways.  Would Taylor want her dad to know what she’d been up to?  It was impossible to say.  

Ooh, that’s a good question. I think she might at least want him to know that she died trying to defend the city, but that kind of requires some additional context.

Taylor wouldn’t want her dad to know about her villainous activity, but to at least have him know she’d gone out as part of a huge sacrifice like this?  Maybe.

Exactly.

Tattletale couldn’t help but feel regret, too.  She had to admit the schism was at least partially her own fault.  Not paying attention, not getting the right info.

I’ve been going back and forth a lot on what determines what info she gets. Ultimately, it does seem like she needs to at least semi-consciously pay attention to something to get information about it, but it might also have an element of luck.

Tattletale couldn’t help but feel she should have been watching out for this sort of thing, knowing that it would take so little to spook the most sensitive member of their group.

Perhaps.

She’d grown lax.  It had been easy to, with the knowledge and comfort of the fact that Coil’s power gave them something of a safety net.

I guess this is why she thinks Taylor would do better – she might think Taylor is too cautious to fall into this sort of complacency.

But when she’d phoned, informed him, her fingers crossed, he’d told her that he was already focusing on other things.

Wait. Informed him about what? Taylor leaving them?

He could only make the call on one series of events with his power, after all, and in the wake of the Endbringer’s arrival, he had greater priorities.  The opportunity had been lost.

…interesting. Sounds like Coil’s power is limited to doing one thing at a time – he can’t both make sure the Endbringer is defeated and make sure Taylor comes back to the Undersiders, unless the latter happens as a result of the former, but if he were to wait until after Leviathan was gone, he might be able to do something then.

Seems like a reasonable limitation, if that is indeed what is meant by “one series of events”.

She’d be better at using my power than I am.

That’s an interesting assessment. I don’t really see where it’s coming from – is it the fact that Skitter found such an effective use of her power? Or maybe Tattle is self-conscious about her contributions to the team, and the times she’s missed something over the previous Arcs?

Speaking of which, I’m very interested to see how the power might manifest in this Interlude. How it’s presented in the text.

Skitter had a piece of wet paper hanging off her shoulder, some trash that the wave had picked up, but there was nobody to point it out or pick it off.  She was alone.  Tattletale felt a pang of sympathy.

Alone against an Endbringer. Well, not really, there are plenty of allies around, but I’m talking more about how it feels – and Taylor is very much in a lonely position right now.

And feelings aside, I think she works a lot better in a team, though she’s done some really cool things on her own.

She’d never been able to stand being isolated, had always had her family, with roommates, friends and fellow squatters living with her after she’d run away.  

backstoryyy

Taylor, though, seemed to gravitate towards solitude.  She pushed people away, and when it came down to the nitty-gritty, when their group had found out the details with the kidnapped girl, Taylor had left.

I suppose that’s true, but it’s not by choice. She’s a lonely girl because of this tendency.

Tattletale couldn’t imagine doing the same thing, and she had strong suspicions Taylor was closer to the others than she was.

I was gonna argue, but… She’s gotten further with Rachel than any of them, it seems (Lisa knows how Rachel’s mind works, but Taylor’s the one who actually acted on that knowledge and made an effort to actually get to know her. We don’t know if Lisa’s tried that yet.), and she and Brian could relate to each other a lot until the differences between cautious and pragmatic became clearer to Taylor.

It was a damn shame that things had gone that way, because she been blossoming as a person, lately, actually connecting to others.  To Bitch, even, of all people.

Yeah.

Something that happened when it did because she Decided to give you all a chance instead of turning you all in to the Protectorate as she had been planning from the start.

Heh, this would be one hell of a moment for her power to chime in with that little tidbit.

“Right,” Tattletale answered.  She looked for Skitter and spotted her in the jumble of people, on her hands and knees in the receding waters from the tidal wave.  The girl stood, coughed a few times, water spraying from the fabric of her mask, then turned her attention to surveying the scene in that peculiar way she did.

Eyy, it’s the last chapter down there! *waves*

So that means Leviathan is about to claim his first victims among the capes.

Skitter was so focused on the scene that she didn’t even seem to notice the bugs congregating around her.

Huh, yeah, I don’t recall that being mentioned last chapter.

More than one out-of-town cape gave her a weird look when a bug flew by, to settle on a wall or somebody’s shoulder, but the girl was oblivious.  Maybe she was so used to being self conscious and imagining people avoiding her or looking at her funny, she couldn’t see it when it was real.

Hah.

So Skitter seems to be subconsciously doing her usual tactic of placing bugs on everyone so she can track them. Interesting.

Funny, that Skitter had turned her ability into such an effective tool for sensing and assessing her environment, yet she was so unaware of some things.

Hehe.

“Everyone is.  Even Legend,” Grue replied.

“Listen,” she said, “If I die-“

“None of us are dying,” Grue spoke, his voice hard.

Hopefully. I still don’t like the phrase “one in four” as applied to a four-person team.

Although the exact number of Undersiders present at the battle is kind of… subjective at the moment, what with Taylor’s borderline status.

“Odds are one of us is going to.  Statistically speaking,” Tattletale pointed out.  “As there’s only four of us…”

…see? And unlike Tattle (probably), I have the knowledge that this is a work of fiction and coincidences aren’t really a thing.

Also, short-as-fuck-term prediction: Grue is about to correct that figure to “three”.

“Three.  Bitch isn’t here and Skitter’s not in the group,” Grue spoke.

Bingo.

“Bigger in person,” Regent spoke.  His normally loose fitting shirt clung to him.

Yeah, I guess he would seem a little smaller on videos of attacks elsewhere, just because he’s not actually threatening your life and residence at the moment.

After moving his arms and watching the water dripping off of the soaked sleeves, he pulled it off, so he wore only the closer-fitting mesh armor he’d had on beneath.

Ah, right, his deceptive outfit that makes him appear a lot more laid back than he actually is. I almost forgot that.

I’m fairly sure that parallels his personality in some way.

Tattletale grinned.  Sometimes you couldn’t do anything else.  “We are so fucking out of our depth.”

Hehe, yeah. Out of all of them, including Taylor, Regent is the only one with a power that might be particularly useful.

Well, unless Tattle’s power provides her with critical information about his weaknesses or something.