I was getting a sense of what Brian had described, once upon a time; that anger and outrage that didn’t even come close to connecting with a fire inside, with burning rage or anything like that. It was cold, dark, and numb.
We found her in one of the exercise rooms. Yoga mats had been stacked together to serve as mattresses, forming a kind of sleeping area.
Sounds decently suited for operation, too.
Most of the Dolltown residents who had been living in this facility were dead now, their cold bodies lying in pools of blood. One of the culprits was at the window, clutching the frame. Bonesaw.
rattyarts: 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge – Day 6: Spider Girl —— Here’s my long awaited next entry for the monster girl ch-… Huh. My mistake, this appears to be a normal human girl. Even if this is not a Worm fanart this is still how I picture Taylor’s swarm clones. Heh, nice! I really […]
“The difference between us and Hookwolf is that we’ve succeeded. We have two of them in our custody. You can’t bide your time, organize, and wait for an opportune moment. They have years of experience fighting people who do that.
So… attack at an inopportune moment to catch them off guard?
Anything you try, they’ve probably dealt with. We win by catching them off guard with powers they don’t know about, powers they can’t expect and interactions between powers. Calculated recklessness.“
That’s a good way to put it!
“We can handle that on our own, with more calculation and less recklessness.”
You’re missing the point. The recklessness is important.
“He’s studied you. For any member of your team with more than three months of experience, he already knows everything they can do, their tricks and individual talents. You have powers we need. We have knowledge on their location, firepower of our own and two captives. We’ll only pull this off if we work together.”
“You don’t have powers they don’t know about.”
Also, Imp’s gotta be super good for the “powers they can’t expect”.
“Putting our lives in your hands,” Miss Militia replied.
“Only as far as we’d be relying on you,” I answered her.
Yeah, this would be a mutual thing.
“Who are you, Skitter?” Legend asked. He floated closer to my swarm-decoy. “I can’t get a read on your personality or motivations, and that’s without touching on what came up at the close of the Endbringer event.”
Speaking of changing the subject, his thoughts come to the surface!
Skitter really isn’t an easy one to figure out when you don’t know her or her story, is she.
I fidgeted. The idea of Brian in the hands of the Nine was… daunting.
Yeeah. He’s probably not having a good time, even if they decided they benefit more from keeping him alive or even unharmed for some reason.
Was Siberian eating him alive, literally? Was he at the mercies of Mannequin? Jack could be torturing him for details on us. Or he could be in Bonesaw’s clutches.
Or all of the above. Restrained using Mannequin’s chains, his toesies being eaten while Bonesaw operates on his head and Jack tortures him in the middle?
Chances were good that they were pissed. Jack excepted, maybe. He’d seemed to like our ambush. In any event, any anger or sadistic tendencies were likely to be taken out on Brian.
Makes sense that he would like it. It came as a surprising and unusual move, adding some spice to the feast that Brockton Bay is to him.
I turned my attention back to Cherish. Shatterbird was saying something to her, her lips moving in the rhythms of speech beneath the glass beak/visor that covered the upper half of her face. She was using her hands to punctuate her words. Cherish didn’t respond.
It’s probably nothing nice. Shatterbird didn’t like Cherish even before Cherish turned out to be planning
and frankly, she’s kind of a bitch.
From the length of Shatterbird’s speech, I took it to be some kind of monologue or lecture.
Hmm. Cherish didn’t get caught trying to make that deal with Imp, did she?
Not that Shatterbird wouldn’t already be inclined to do this just from her previous offense. Also, if Cherish got caught, she’d probably be dead or worse already.
“Because if you say no, if you try to run or walk away, if you attack me, I’ll consider your test a fail.”
Making her eligible for elimination. I’m a bit unclear on whether she has to fail each individual tester’s test for that tester to kill her – though I would think so – but if she doesn’t, she’d lose her protection if this happened.
“So?”
“I’ll have no reason to hold back. Your team dies, your dogs die, and you’ll wish you were dead.”
I wonder if that means she’d torture Bitch herself, or she’d give her over to Bonesaw.
“Fuck you,” Bitch retorted, but she glanced at Grue and I, and I could have sworn I saw doubt. Was it indecision? The way Burnscar had framed this, Bitch either had to admit she cared about us and fight for our sake, or Bitch could attack us to secure her safety and her dogs.
Mannequin put in a very interesting new weapon for the Undersiders to work around, and watching Taylor figure out how to deal with that, and the teamwork between Taylor, Brian and Bastard as they blew Mannequin’s ass up a couple times, was quite satisfying.
I do feel like Mannequin could’ve made more use of some of his other abilities besides gas and gun, but to be fair, we’ve already had the first fight against him to highlight those and he did end up fighting with limited space on the sides (though exactly how limited is unclear). Also he may have been unable to protect his arms from Taylor’s spiders while extended.
And then there’s the twist at the end – Burnscar taking over Cherish’s turn in order to be allowed to fight the Undersiders right now. Welp. None of them are feeling particularly well after the Mannequin fight and now it’s right on to fighting Burnscar? And, as I mentioned in this chapter before it reminded me of Burnscar’s existence, Skitter’s costume is made of spider silk, which supposedly isn’t good against heat. Though it does seem to have survived the fire sweep Burnscar did near the end of this chapter, as well as the battles with Lung, so maybe I’m giving it too little credit.
Anyway, better hope Genesis can find the alley soon, because damn, the Undersiders need her help.
“Eh. This is getting too complicated and I’ve got a time limit. Let’s just get this over with.”
Three things happened all at once. The first and most painfully obvious was that I got shot full in the chest.
Time to finally answer that old questio–
Wait a minute.
We do actually know that already. Miss Militia shot her in Parasite, and if I’m not mistaken, the bullets went through – so it’s not bulletproof, at least in the softer areas.
…let’s hope this hit the harder parts.
The second was that I realized Grue was using his power to shroud us in darkness. He’d probably started the second Mannequin shrugged.
Nice, throwing off the aim, maybe. Though apparently Grue’s power doesn’t work against Mannequin’s senses, so… maybe he’s trying to ward off the worst of the explosion that’s probably the third thing that’s happening?
What’s not to like about this chapter? We got a direct look at Grue and Imp’s mother and the people she surrounds herself with (poor Jennifer, get out while you still can), insight into how Imp’s power works (most notably that it has to be actively turned *off*, not on), stealthy secret agent double-0h-Imp, the reveal of Bonesaw having protected the squishies (which I somehow managed to partially call out of nowhere just a couple paragraphs before the reveal? I swear I didn’t edit anything after moving on to the next blockquote.) and perhaps most importantly, Cherish wanting to make a deal behind Jack’s back.
I can’t find it, but I’m pretty sure I kind of called that at some point before this chapter, musing on Cherish’s best options – betraying the Nine and seeking protection with the protagonists is her best shot at non-horrific survival, even if it’s going to take some convincing for the protagonists to let her stay. In any case, Cherish wanting to make a deal, whatever the specifics may be, is a quite satisfying development and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Will Imp succeed in her espionage mission, or will she be captured or worse? Will Taylor get back to her territory in time to stop Mannequin? Does Jack Slash have a secret crush on Miss Militia?
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