Maybe we’re about to finally learn Newbie’s name.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess… Monika.
Tag: i11gp2
She tried the front door and stepped inside. The inside was nicer than the outside, watertight, heavily reinforced. A feminine looking teenaged boy with a mop of dark curls stood at the other side of the building. He had two men and a woman guarding him.
CALLED IT
Hiya, Alec, what’s up?
I mean, besides being visited by a girl who just made your soldiers kill themselves.
Also, is Alec controlling the men and the woman? And if he is, would all of him feel the effects of Newbie messing with his puppets’ emotions and be forced to act on them, or would they be mostly immune to tricks like the suicide switch because no matter how much Newbie might make them want to do something, they don’t have any control over their body to do it with?
Based on how things went with Shadow Stalker, I’m inclined to think the latter.
She didn’t wait for them to step outside. She did the same thing she’d done to the guards stationed outside, crushing them with despair, overwhelming them with loathing and paranoia.
It’s handy when your power’s range goes through walls.
It was only slightly faster than it had been here. Here, there had been an enemy for the soldiers to focus their negative energies on, to distract them.
Huh. I had expected it to be the other way around since the people inside didn’t have her literally telling them what to do about it, but I suppose it makes sense that this would have a larger impact.
It was surprising how important that could be.
Yeah.
Nearly a minute passed before the fourth gunshot sounded, marking the death of the last soldier here.
From an inside perspective – like the non-soldiers’ – this must be terrifying.
It wasn’t immediate, but their willpower wasn’t enough to stave off some of the strongest and most agonizing emotions they would have felt in their lives. It was quick when their composure cracked, the guns flying to mouth and temple to fire.
Damn.
She could sense the others inside the building, alarmed at the gunshots, moving toward the front.
Oh yeah, maybe not the best move to make them do it so noisily? But on the other hand, Newbie doesn’t seem to be the type for stealth.
Four more soldiers and four others who stayed back. Not soldiers.
Hmm, interesting.
If we are at Alec’s base, which is still quite unclear, then… has he gone back to his old habit of having some people to control, now that he’s not living with all the other Undersiders anymore?
Also, if it really is Alec, then the line “He was familiar enough.” might be a nice bit of meta – he’s certainly familiar enough to the reader by now, especially after Interlude 10a.
And all she wanted was a few minutes to pay a visit to hers. She didn’t have to name that one. He was familiar enough. She smiled.
Hmm.
Actually, looking back, it looks like Hatchet Face got a pick and Newbie’s pick – Alec? – wasn’t mentioned. The crusader, perhaps, might’ve been Hatchet Face’s pick.
Two men sat on the steps outside the building. She knew immediately that they were soldiers, but they weren’t official.
Coildiers?
They wore black, and they wore body armor that she hadn’t seen before.
Probably tinkertech Coil got access to somehow.
“No,” she stopped them from reaching from their guns with a mixture of doubt, apathy and anxiety.
“Uhh? I don’t know who you are and I’m a little worried, but I kinda don’t care?”
Complementing her words with a heavy surge of depression, guilt and self loathing, she ordered them, “Kill yourselves.”
Jeez, that’s harsh!
Also, the fact that she’s predominantly using the emotional manipulation to make people obey her commands makes me feel even more sure about her possible relation to Heartbreaker and Alec.
Each had made their picks:
The buried girl. The arrogant geek. The dog lover. The daydreamer. The warlord. The scaredy cat. The broken assassin. The crusader.
The Twins, The Lover, The Protector, The Lonely Journal Keeper, The Peacemaker and the Wordless One.
Okay, so I guess they can’t go pick someone else if they picked from a list in advance. That’s fair.
Let’s see…
- The buried girl would be Noelle, located underground over an extended period of time.
- The arrogant geek is obviously Armmaster. I wonder what he’d think of being called a geek.
- The dog lover is similarly obvious, being Bitch.
- The daydreamer sounds like Labyrinth, but did Burnscar really pick her out from a list of the most fucked up people of Brockton Bay? That doesn’t sound right. Though I suppose Labyrinth does have some pretty strong emotional issues that Newbie might pick up on.
- I don’t even need to say who the rainbow one is, do I.
- The warlord would be Hookwolf.
- Oni Lee sounds like the scaredy cat for a moment due to his tendency to flee from battle, but he fits much better as the broken assassin, especially after what we learned in Jack’s Interlude.
That leaves us with the scaredy cat and the crusader for the Newbie and Bonesaw.
The crusader strikes me as a red herring. We have a character named the Crusader, and that’s exactly why I think it’s not him. Who else has the propensity for going on violent rampages for a specific cause? Hookwolf is taken (I suppose he could be the crusader and someone else is the warlord, but after that spiel about wishing he was in the ancient Roman military or something like it?), Kaiser is dead, and if it’s Purity, Jack made a huge faux pas by plotting to kill one of the others’ nominee. And Panacea, whom I’ve been speculating to be Bonesaw’s pick, is more altruistic and duty-bound than crusadery about healing people.
The scaredy cat… sounds like an odd sort of person to attempt to recruit. I really have no clue who this could be. It’s not Alec or Panacea, neither of those are characterized by fear. Also I get the feeling that there’s some hinting about them actually being cat-like or otherwise having something to do with cats, here, but the only character we know with a feline association is Siberian, who is obviously off the table.
…hm, I do suppose Alec might be characterized as a scaredy cat for escaping Heartbreaker, but that seems like a stretch considering he doesn’t actually appear to be scared.
Anyway, this is a really neat little rundown of the nominees. It would’ve been fun having this to speculate on earlier, though I get that it’d be a little too clear and would spoil some of the twists in the other Interludes when examined properly.
She reached out and started feeling for the outliers. The emotional fingerprints that stood out from the rest.
The other seven members of the Nine were out there. Not hard to find. One or two were interacting with some other outliers. The most fucked up people in this fucked up city.
Ah, yes, their nominees, I suppose.
Interestingly, only two of the nominations we’ve seen have worked out past the first contact stage, meaning some of the Slaughterhouse members may still have found someone else to nominate, if they’re allowed to do that. (Again, I doubt the Slaughterhouse are sticklers for rules.)
She’d studied each of these unknown outliers over the course of a week, watching their emotions shift as they went out about their lives, sometimes visiting the areas they tended to hang around, to get a sense of their environments.
Trying to get an idea of who your fellow members are nominating?
Slowly, she’d pieced them together, created profiles, discerned which ones had powers and described them to the other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Ohh, no, this is earlier – she’s basically been a radar for potential nominees! That explains how the Slaughterhouse members found out about each of their nominees so quickly.
I like this.
Perhaps Newbie’s objective could have something to do with Alec? Seeking out her wayward half-brother (or maybe even full brother)? But if she’s working on her own, which is most likely if that is the case, then what was the phone “call” about?
This kind of situation, ordinary citizens were doing things they’d never even have considered before. Stealing, hurting their neighbors, bartering things they once considered precious for clothing, food, toilet paper and other essentials.
Some of them even jaywalk!
Emotions were raw, far closer to the surface, easier to manipulate.
Oh yeah, I suppose this is wonderful for your power.
Her music cut off. She checked the phone. An alert on the screen notified her that the battery was dying.
Damn, that sucks.
She swore. No more time to waste. She dialed a number, but didn’t hold the phone up to her ear. Good. Now she had fifteen minutes.
Did you set up a bomb somewhere to start ticking down when you called it? Or maybe there’s someone waiting for you to alert them but who doesn’t need to talk to you for more information.
It seems like Newbie has an objective here, but what?
Krixwell Liveblogs 