Shatterbird took flight, calling up a storm of glass shards to accompany her.  She flew low to the ground, relying on the surrounding buildings and ruins to keep out of sight.

Genesis had finished pulling herself together.  Her form resembled Crawler, but with some additions.

Hm. Are they going to pass this off as Crawler having managed to reclaim Shatterbird but taken some damage in the process? Better hope Crawler isn’t with the rest of the Nine if that’s what they’re going for.

Growths on her back resembled Bonesaw and Jack.  She tested her limbs, then looked at us.

…and apparently they’re going to pretend they have Bonesaw and Jack with them too.

That makes at least three members of the Nine who can totally call their bluff.

At me?  I couldn’t tell.  She had too many eyes to tell.

Hah.

“I can’t agree with that.”

“Then make your call.  If you’re absolutely certain you’re not going to fuck us over and give away the plan, if you’re positive that the lives you might save are worth risking our lives and Grue’s, you can go ahead.  You don’t have anyone’s support here, and it’s all on you if you fail.”

At least he gives her the choice, even if he’s heavily indicating she shouldn’t try.

Tattletale spoke, “If you’re going to do something, you better do it fast.”

She pointed, and every pair of eyes in our group turned to look.

Purity streaked across the sky, followed by Crusader and a floating rock carrying a whole contingent of their group.

Oh shit! Have they too come to attack the Nine (perhaps inspired into action by the Undertravelers?), or did they just happen to be in the area?

The rest would be moving along the ground.

“Shatterbird, Genesis, go!”

Up to communicate?

…if that’s the goal, sending Shatterbird might be a bad idea.

Regent nodded in agreement.

I looked at the others for help.  Tattletale remained quiet, and Sundancer, the one other person I’d hoped would be sympathetic, looked away.

This feels familiar. It reminds me of when Taylor found out about Dinah.

“Those are people,” I said.  “Real people.”

“So’s Grue, and so are we.  We look out for ourselves first.  If we can take out members of the Nine, we’ll save more people in the long run.”

It’s a hard choice, but I think he’s right.

“The ends justify the means?  You realize that when this all goes down, they’re going to die?  Almost guaranteed?”  I’d directed Sundancer to attack a group of people who included bystanders, but they’d been goners already, dead for all intents and purposes.  This was something else.

Fuck, sounds like what they’re planning is quite destructive.

“Thirty people for the sake of hundreds.  It balances out,” Trickster said.

Numbers.

Of course, Taylor has never really managed to think like that, for better or worse.

“If we stick to the plan and if we’re successful.”

“Don’t fuck around or their deaths will be in vain.”

I asked, “Tattletale, do you know where the Nine are, specifically?”

She shook her head.

That would probably have been helpful, especially with Ballistic on the team. Boom, bunch of rubble over them.

“There’re people here.  I’m counting thirty or so, but there could be twice that many.  I haven’t even taken a serious look at the building the Nine are in, because I don’t want to alert them.”

Anyone who’s in that building is probably fucked already.

“Ignore them,” Trickster said.  “This is risky enough without splitting our focus.”

That’s asking a hell of a lot out of miss “four out of maybe thirty didn’t make it so it wasn’t a victory” over here.

“If I know where the Nine are, I can tell these people where to run, give them a chance.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” Trickster stressed.

Trickster is to some extent taking over Grue’s role in Grue’s absence.

He glanced at his teammates, “There’s still five or six of the enemy in the area.  If they see what you’re up to and get any advance warning we’re here, this all goes balls-up, and we suffer for it.  Grue dies for it.”

I suppose so.

Waiting.  The last thing I wanted to do.

Look, I get it, but consider this: Refusing to wait is what got Grue into this mess in the first place.

Using my bugs, I tried to scope out the area.  Please don’t let there be people here.

There’s gonna be people here, isn’t there.

There were.

Yep.

I had to be subtle, not giving the Nine any reason to suspect I was around, but even if I counted only the people who had bugs on them already, there were far too many people in and around Dolltown.

Maybe they took the fighting as “they’ve dealt with the threat, they’re not coming back anytime soon”.

“Regent, can you stop Shatterbird from listening in?”  I asked.

*shapes glass into earplugs*

“Sure,” he said.  Shatterbird shut her eyes and covered her ears with her hands.

“LALALALALA”

The final two members of our group arrived a moment later.  Shatterbird landed, stumbling, and Genesis began to materialize in a massive form.

Ahh, so Regent didn’t bring himself along in the car, he was flying along.

Which he’s clearly not used to being able to do. 😛

We were close to the site of our last fight.  The Nine had been on their way to Dolltown, and we’d ambushed them, divided them, and then provoked them into extending out of position.  Having done that, we’d kidnapped Shatterbird as she lagged behind and then looped around to capture the wounded Cherish.

Yes, I remember. My memory’s shitty sometimes, but that was just two chapters ago. 😛

Now the Nine were inside Dolltown.

Well, that’s probably not good. I hope Parian’s still alive.

I could only hope the noise and fighting of our last encounter would have given most of the residents the time and the motivation to run.

Let’s hope they didn’t go “eh, Parian will protect us if they do show up here”. I mean, sure, trust in your protector and don’t panic, but there’s a limit to what she can do.

“We should stop here,” Tattletale said.

Yes, good, please distract Taylor.

That was apparently order enough, because the driver pulled over.  The long seconds of stillness after the truck had stopped said volumes.  We didn’t want to get out of the car, we didn’t want to face the Nine, deal with their traps as we tried to catch them in our own.

Snare.

Two or three seconds passed with tension thrumming in the air, every one of our nerves on edge, ready to act, react, even now.

It’s go time.

The sound of a slamming door from one of the other trucks was the little push we needed to move.  We climbed out of the truck and joined the others.  Bitch had been the first one out.  She had Sirius, Bastard and Bentley with her.

Ah, yeah, she would be the first one out. No dawdling for this gal.

We ventured over to a fallen section of wall, peering over it to get a better glimpse of what would be the battlefield.

This so far feels a lot less structured than the previous ambush.

So, what, did they invite the Nine to a brawl or something? …probably not.