She stared down at me.

If this doesn’t work, she might kill me for real.

If this does work, she’s gonna kill you even harder.

Tattletale helped me to my feet and handed me my glasses.  I got my mask in place around the lower half of my face and then gathered bugs over the mask and glasses to hide my features.

It’s a pretty fetching if somewhat disturbing look.

“How’s that work?”  Tattletale asked.

“The effects are being generated by a parasite.  Panacea changed the parasite to some kind of symbiotic species that overrides the effects of Bonesaw’s work and heals the effects on the brain.  My bodily fluids are carrying it.  That means that right now, the parasites in Bitch’s bodies should be dying or getting replaced or transformed or something.  I hope.”

Thanks. It does help to get it recapped in a more laymannish way like this.

I dusted myself off, wiped at my costume where I’d landed in the water, and made sure none of my belongings had dropped from their positions in my armor or my belt.

I didn’t hurry to meet Bitch’s eyes, because I knew that when I did, I’d have to maintain that gaze.

It’s gonna be one hell of a gaze.

Only when I was done did I meet her eyes.

She took her time responding.  “I was going to have Bentley break you.”

“But now I’m going to have all of them do it.”

It was so startling to see that I nearly forgot what I was doing.  I drew in a short breath, then let slow breath out as I aimed the gun at Jack and squeezed the trigger.

(except I don’t think it’ll work)

I’d mentally planned to unload the gun on Jack and Bonesaw, but I’d forgotten about the recoil.   At the same time Jack was struck down, my arm jerked up, and my mental instruction to fire nonetheless carried through.

Oops.

So she shot the ceiling? (But she didn’t kill the deputy.)

The second bullet hit the ceiling.

I whipped the door open and turned to my right to fire on Bonesaw, but my arm was numb, and her reflexes were sharp.

That doesn’t sound good.

She was already opening a door at the other corner of the classroom before I could shoot, making her way into the hallway.

Damn.

You should probably focus on checking out Jack first, though. Then again, that might give Bonesaw time to amass her spiders and other assorted toys.

“Doesn’t matter.  She would have reacted sooner if she’d been getting enough sleep, if her emotions weren’t off kilter.”

Like I was saying. This is a Taylor-level self-blame.

“Amy-” I started.

She shook her head so violently that I stopped mid-sentence.  “I can almost feel right about this.  I patch things up, and then I go.”

A clean break might actually be good here, I suppose.

Amy bent down and touched her sister.  Glory Girl stirred and sat up.  With Amy’s help she stood.

“You’re lying to yourself,” Tattletale said.  “And you’re making things worse.”

Probably, yeah.

“Just- I’m just keeping her complacent.  I’m okay with it if she doesn’t forgive me for it.  Don’t deserve it anyways.

You do deserve it.

And yeah, we don’t want Victoria punching anyone right now.

I do this, and then I’ll go somewhere I can be useful.  Only reason I haven’t made more of myself and my power is because of the rules and regulations about exploiting minors with powers.

What?

I mean, I’m not surprised such rules exist, but how have they been keeping her from using her power?

Either go into government or don’t work at all, and didn’t want to go into government because they would have made me a weapon.  And because I needed to be with my family.”

Ahh, I see.

Siberian was letting her hair fall from her hands.  She flicked the last strand back over her shoulder.

Go time?

I collected the swarm into a dozen decoys in the same instant Siberian started striding forward, then scattered them.

Nice. I was on the money, I suppose!

I guess that would be why they needed Amy out of Siberian’s sight.

Siberian stopped, pivoting on the spot, then lunged for one side of the street.  She threw herself through the side of a parked pickup truck, shearing through the fiberglass and metal, and landed in a crouch on the far side of it.

Rude.

She gripped the two sections of the vehicle, tearing where they were still connected on the underside, and then spun in place, holding each half out to one side.

Gonna throw those at different decoys?

Considering your speed it might be faster to just dash right through each one.

I couldn’t be sure, but as I looked through the binoculars, I was pretty sure that I caught a glimpse of her holding one half of the truck by a glass pane of a side window, index and middle finger on either side of the broken glass.

So I guess they’re able to extend their invulnerability to objects as well? The glass pane doesn’t break under the weight of the rest of the truck-half because they’re making sure the whole thing is indestructible until thrown.

In most cases, a cape trying to pick up a car by anything but the undercarriage would find it falling apart, the weight of the vehicle pulling it free of whatever section the cape was holding.  Siberian didn’t have that problem.

Yes, precisely.

She simply extended her power through whatever she was holding to keep it intact.

It takes a bit of the punch out of it when I’m proven right immediately, but knowing how bad I can be at this sometimes, it’s still nice when these moments come along to prove that yes, I can pick up what’s being put down from time to time. :p

Was that Alec trying to be supportive?  I glanced at Aisha, and she gave me something of a dirty look.

Yes, I think that is Alec trying to be supportive. It certainly got a lot more heartwarming and a lot less mocking than his initial bet line seemed.

I was awkward, screwed up and feeling guilty on a lot of levels, from Brian to Dinah to the people in my territory that I hadn’t seen to.

Skitter, on a therapist couch: “I’m taking time to work on my mental health instead of being out there, taking care of my territory and saving Dinah…”
Therapist: “And how does that make you feel?”
Skitter:

Brian was traumatized, and that was layered on what he’d described to me as an unfamiliarity with social situations and emotions.  Alec was fucked up in a way I couldn’t even label.  Aisha wanted to protect her brother but didn’t know how, lashing out at me instead.  Damaged people.

Yeah, but at least you’re not alone about it. You have each other.

“I’ll get the message to them promptly.”

I hung up.

Thank you, Cranston.

I returned to Brian with a mug of tea for myself and a glass of water for him.  The television was on, and he sat in the middle of the couch.  He patted at one cushion.

Somehow this reminds me of Interlude 11h.

With the way he was positioned, there was no way for me to sit a distance from him.

At the same time, when I did sit, he didn’t reach out to touch me, to put a hand on my shoulder, or any of that.  We watched terrible late night TV with the volume so low we could barely hear it, not talking, not making body contact, barely even looking at each other.

Well, at least they’re there? With each other? Just supporting each other by being present?

…y’know what I don’t understand? How going to a movie at the cinema is supposed to be a social experience. You’re not supposed to talk or even look at people, just sit there and watch the movie. What’s social about that besides occasionally sharing your snacks with the person next to you?

He’d confessed feelings for me, after a fashion; I had a special place in his thoughts, even if he didn’t know what that meant, exactly.

It’s something, yes…

Now how do you feel about that at this point?

We were sharing personal parts of ourselves we’d never let others see.  We even cared about each other.

Man, the serial readers who went down with the ship in Arc 7 and clung onto the shipwreck until Arc 13 must’ve felt so vindicated when these last two chapters came out. The shipping scene around the time of this chapter must’ve been wild.

Although exactly how wild depends a lot on what Taylor is about to say about her own feelings on this whole thing.